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OCTOBER 2012 |
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MESSAGE FROM THE SMRT PRESIDENT |
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| My fellow MR
Technologists and Radiographers, The change of seasons is upon us and it has been a busy time in MR land. Healthcare reform and budget cuts have seen many of us working short staffed at frantic paces. Although never a good situation, working short staffed highlights just how very important MR safety is and how important a role the MR technologist /radiographer plays in screening and safe practices in the MR environment. Much attention has been focused on preventing accidents with new policies, equipment and guidelines being formulated and implemented across the world. As MR technologists we know that Safety has always been our number one goal. We can only hope that this increased focus will help us to move forward our mission of education and minimum standards for MR technologists. Also in the vein of safety the SMRT has been working with a group of implant and device manufactures to address the on-going concerns related to screening and scanning active and passive implants. We participated in a USA FDA exploratory meeting October 2011 and at the ISMRM Safety meeting in Lund, Sweden in September 2012. Very encouraging and exciting measures are being debated. Again please visit our website or FB page to see the updates as they happen. In the US the CARE Bbill is once again up for vote in Congress. There is an Alliance of healthcare professionals in which the SMRT is a member, currently campaigning on our behalf. We could however use all the grass roots support from each of you. Write, call, e-mail and otherwise encourage your legislators to support these efforts. Care Bill Link: http://www.asrt.org/main/standards-regulations/legislative-affairs/take-it-further The SMRT is coming off an outstanding meeting in Melbourne, Australia and looking forward to April 2013 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The program committee is very close to a final schedule and I think you will all be very pleased with their efforts. There are also several regional educational seminars being held throughout the world. Please visit our website to check out the dates and locations! The educational opportunities offered by the SMRT have expanded over the last year. In addition to the annual and regional meetings we have a very extensive catalog of electronic material available for CEUs. The Policy Board is reviewing the educational survey in which many of you participated. Your input is very valuable to us and we will respond as best we can to your needs. Again please visit our website to take advantage of all the SMRT has to offer its’ members and check out the Facebook (FB) page and sign up for Twitter. Speaking of Facebook…we are working hard to become an active participant in the social media world. Please visit and “like” the SMRT Facebook site. We’ll keep you in the loop with upcoming meeting, events and news! As a reminder to our members and to highlight the many services provided by the SMRT, there will be a “Did you Know?” section added to our newsletter publication. The space will detail the benefits we offer and also update technologists about SMRT activities. I’d like to thank those of you who participated in the educational survey. This information is very helpful to us as we plan events and publications. The response was gratifying with 807 respondents from all over the world. The overwhelming result demonstrated the need for education specific to MR and the ability to track and record credits for technologists/radiographers records. The SMRT leadership is working toward the goal of providing tracking for credits. It is a slower process than we would like but please know we are moving forward with our goal of tracking individual CE credits. The SMRT has a wealth of educational offering. We call that section of our website “Home Studies”. Within that area you will find articles (that you can print out for those of you who like to carry it around), and videos. Each of these has an accompanying quiz that can be submitted electronically. I think you will find there is a vast store of very good and useful information. If you are not a member a few of these are available to you at no fee. For our members, at this time you can download anything from the archives. New information is published at least 4 times per year. For those unable to travel to regional educational seminars or the annual meetings, we try hard to video seminar lectures and provide that information to share with our members. Please take a moment to follow this link and learn about these opportunities for you. I think you will be impressed and I hope you find this useful in your everyday practice. http://www.ismrm.org/smrt/home-studies/ Happy Scanning! |
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