RSNA News - August 2005

RSNA Board of Directors Report

R.Gilbert Jost, M.D. Chairman, 2005 RSNA Board of Directors

The RSNA 2005-2006 budget was presented and approved at the June meeting of the RSNA Board of Directors. The operating plan includes several new projects and further refines existing programs to make them more meaningful and efficient for our members’ evolving professional needs.

The Board also continued discussion toward a five-year vision that focuses on maintenance of certification (MOC), education programs and resources, international outreach and developing an annual education conference that would be held separately from the annual meeting. Details will be included in future issues of RSNA News.

New Project

The Public Information Committee recommended, and the Board approved, a suite of activities designed to help radiologists enhance their interaction with patients and to help improve the public’s perception of radiologists.

This multifaceted program will make radiologists more visible to the public and will increase the public’s understanding of medical imaging in healthcare.

Expanded Projects

In 2002, RSNA launched the Exploring Your Future in Radiology program to provide public high school students in Chicago with the opportunity to learn more about radiology and related career opportunities. Each year at the RSNA annual meeting, 30–40 students attend lectures, hands-on workshops, career presentations and tours of the technical exhibits. The students then have the opportunity to compete for $1,000 scholarships from RSNA.

At RSNA 2005, the program will be videotaped and distributed to high schools across the country to be used by guidance counselors and at job fairs. The videotape will also be offered to radiologists and radiology organizations.

Last fall, RSNA began distributing quarterly public service announcements (PSAs)to radio stations in the United States to increase awareness about radiology’s role in the healthcare community. These PSAs are in the form of printed scripts tied to a health awareness event, such as breast cancer awareness month or stroke awareness month.

The Board has approved a plan to expand this program to include pre-recorded health messages and printed scripts in Spanish. The expanded program will help increase distribution and utilization. Similarly, the Board has authorized an expanded package of background video to be offered to televisions stations for use during medical news segments.

RSNA 2005

A digital mammography training and self-assessment workshop will be offered at the RSNA annual meeting. It is important that radiologists and radiology residents receive hands-on experience in reading and manipulating digital mammography cases on diagnostic and screening workstations, as well as the ability to assess their skills in that area.

The workshop will be held in the Lakeside Center of McCormick Place. More information will be available in a future edition of RSNA News.

To make it easier for annual meeting attendees to view electronic scientific posters and education exhibits, the Board has approved using 300 dedicated computers and 22 theaters that will be located throughout the exhibit hall. In response to feedback from last year’s attendees, guidelines for authors have been developed to make the electronic posters and exhibits more uniform in size and general structure. These changes, along with improvements in the navigation features of the system, should make viewing the exhibits easier and more intuitive.

All scientific posters will be in digital format this year while education exhibits in five subspecialties—cardiac radiology, chest radiology, genitourinary radiology, neuroradiology and vascular/interventional radiology—will all be electronic.

In an effort to make RSNA.org more user-friendly, RSNA will conduct hands-on user-feedback sessions at the annual meeting to observe how members use the Web site, and to take note of which pages are easily accessed and which pages are more difficult to find or use.


(left) The 2005 Exploring Your Future in Radiology program will be videotaped and distributed to guidance counselors at high schools across the United States.

(right) Three-hundred dedicated computers and 22 theaters will be available to view the electronic scientific posters and education exhibits at RSNA 2005.

Medical Professionalism

RSNA has endorsed “Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium: A Physician Charter.”

The charter was developed by the Medical Professionalism Project, which is jointly sponsored by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, American College of Physicians Foundation and European Federation of Internal Medicine.

Endorsing the charter supports RSNA’s goals and objectives, especially professionalism, integrity and service to the patient. To view the charter, go to www.abimfoundation.org/pdf/ABIM_charter_Ins.pdf.

Molecular Imaging

In collaboration with the Society for Molecular Imaging (SMI) and the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM), RSNA will sponsor a one-day clinically oriented educational workshop on molecular imaging. The workshop will be held immediately preceding the SMI annual meeting in September 2006 in Hawaii. SNM co-sponsored with RSNA the recent Molecular Imaging Summit held in Oak Brook, Ill. (See the July issue of RSNA News.)

Planning and implementing the workshop will fall under the charge of RSNA’s newly formed Committee on Molecular Imaging. The chair is Ralph Weissleder M.D., Ph.D., from Massachusetts General Hospital.

Bylaws Amendments

Several bylaws amendments and updates have been proposed to establish new membership categories, to discontinue one committee and to revise the language of the text for consistency, style and clarity.

The changes will be published in the October issue of Radiology and will be presented for a vote by RSNA members attending the business session at the annual meeting.

Other Board Action

• RSNA will participate in the fourth Biomedical Imaging Research Opportunities Workshop to be held in February 2006 in Bethesda, Md. The American Association of Physicists in Medicine will be the lead organizer this year.
• RSNA will host an annual conference of RSNA committee chairs in an effort to enhance communication between the chairs and board members.
• The Research Trainee Prize and Medical Student Award will each be renamed the Trainee Research Prize
• RSNA has endorsed a campaign to make Chicago a Smoke-free city.

R. Gilbert Jost, M.D.
Chairman, 2005 RSNA Board of Directors

Note: In our continuing efforts to keep RSNA members informed, the chair of the RSNA Board of Directors will provide a brief report in RSNA News following each board meeting. The next RSNA Board Meeting is in September.