Watch this session on ECR Live:Thursday, March 7, 16:00–17:30, Room F1
Postgraduate radiology training is high on the agenda in Europe, with a great deal of attention in recent years being given to the harmonisation of educational standards across the continent, but there is a growing feeling within the discipline that radiology should not lose sight of the equally important issue of undergraduate education. Exposing undergraduates to radiology not only serves the obvious and vital purpose of inspiring potential radiologists, but also ensures that students who go on to follow careers in other disciplines are well versed in what radiology can offer and how it operates. In broad terms, the net result is a combination of helping to secure the discipline’s future and making life easier for its practitioners.
However, making sure undergraduates are given sufficient contact with radiology is no easy task. The competing clinical, managerial and academic demands on radiologists’ time and skills, which increase with every year, mean that any additional activities run the risk of being excluded. The time and resources needed, not just to teach, but also to carry out the necessary preparation for effective teaching, can often make it impossible to fit in to an already hectic schedule.
Professor Stephen J. Golding (left) from Oxford will chair today’s Professional Challenges Session on undergraduate teaching.
As acknowledged in last year’s ESR white paper on the subject, the concept of personalised medicine (PM) is becoming an increasingly hot topic. The patient-centred principles of PM have the potential to take over as the dominant philosophy in clinical healthcare in the relatively near future, which would see the focus of the medical world gradually shifting away from the current system of ‘disease care’, towards an approach based on prediction and prevention. However, although most radiologists are aware of the idea of PM and rightly consider medical imaging to already be among the most personalised aspects of healthcare, there is perhaps a need for more awareness of the exact nature of this new paradigm, and specifically a need for recognition – from within and outside the discipline – of the role that medical imaging should play.
ESR President Prof. Gabriel P. Krestin will chair the Professional Challenges Session on personalised medicine
A Professional Challenges Session at ECR 2013, chaired by the ESR President, Prof. Gabriel Krestin, will aim to raise awareness of the core principles of PM and highlight the factors that radiologists will need to consider in order to adapt their approach to training, clinical practice and research.
“The whole idea of PM, and the role of imaging within it, is relevant to all of us,” said Krestin, from the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, Netherlands. “It is a concept that will gain in importance in the coming years and it will have an increasing influence on the way we work as radiologists. I think many people have heard of PM, but certainly not everyone will have a sound conception of exactly what it is or its full implications for imaging and our daily practice. To be aware of this, and the possibilities that will probably multiply in the coming years, is very important.”
The quality of the ECR’s sessions for radiographers has been given a welcome seal of approval from the European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS) who recently elected the ECR as their official annual scientific meeting. EFRS president, Prof. Graciano Paulo, from the college of health technology of Coimbra, Portugal, has been coming to the ECR for more than a decade and firmly believes the upcoming congress boasts one of the best selections yet for radiographers. Here he gives his personal preview of ECR 2013 and each of these sessions, all of which you can find in the ECR 2013 Interactive Programme Planner by searching for ‘radiographers’.
Read on for Prof. Paulo’s preview of all the sessions for radiographers at ECR 2013 …
The ‘ESR Meets’ programme, as well as being an extremely popular part of every ECR, serves a very valuable purpose. The sessions have not only reinforced relationships with numerous European national societies since the programme’s introduction in 2003, but they have also represented the ESR’s first official connections with several societies, sometimes from other continents and, more recently, from other disciplines. This year’s partner society, the European-African Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association (E-AHPBA) takes the ‘ESR Meets’ programme one step further …
E-HPBA president, Prof. Pierre-Alain Clavien, from Zurich, Switzerland
It may feel like 2013 just began yesterday, but we’ve already turned the first corner into February, which means the ECR is not so much creeping up on us as sprinting at full speed. So, in the five weeks remaining before March 7, what can you do to make sure you get the most out of this five-day festival of everything radiological? Here are our five top tips to get you off to a good start.
ECR badges, patiently waiting to be mailed
1) Get your badge mailed to you
Nobody wants to turn up full of enthusiasm on the first morning, only to spend the first 30 minutes in the longest queue of the whole congress. Be one of the smart ones; register before February 6 and get your congress badge and CME stickers sent to your home. You’ll be glad you did when you waltz past the waiting masses at the onsite registration desks.
If you’re preparing for the European Diploma in Radiology, help is on the way …
Dr. Pepe, co-star of our popular blog series Caceres’ Corner, is finally going solo (with the help of some very good friends). Next month, here on the myESR blog, he will start presenting a series of cases that are typical of what you might expect to find in the European Diploma in Radiology examination, especially to help you prepare.
We have to admit it; the ESR social media team has had its eye on this big, round target for a while. Since starting the myESR Facebook page around two years ago, we have watched the little ticker marked ‘fans’ gradually get higher and higher. At some point, as we realised it would keep going, we started to set our sights on building a Facebook community that would reflect the size of the ESR. Our ‘fantasy’ aim: to gain 10,000 page likes by the start of ECR 2012.
Well, as it turns out, when a snowball starts rolling on Facebook, it tends to keep going…
The print edition of the ECR 2012 Preliminary Programme
It’s probably more than clear that we’re big fans of the internet at the ESR office. We’ve embraced speedy online publication for our congress and journals, we’ve turned our hand to the snappy world of social media (including, obviously, our recent launch into the blogosphere), and we’ve created a whole catalogue of online tools for learning, booking and planning in the last few years. But as much as we love exploring and testing these new possibilities, doing the traditional things still gives us just as much satisfaction. That’s why, despite our own efforts to cut down on print production, we couldn’t resist printing a few hundred ECR preliminary programmes to share with you, which we’re delighted to be giving away and delivering free on a first-come-first-served basis.
Prof. Maximilian Reiser meets young radiologists in the Rising Stars Lounge at ECR 2011
‘Invest in the Youth’ (IITY) is a name that speaks for itself. Not only does it describe the programme’s own purpose extremely clearly, but it also serves as an excellent reminder to all the ESR’s officers, committees, and members of one of the main objectives of the ESR: inspiring and supporting future generations of radiologists.
The programme has given thousands of students and residents the chance to experience Europe’s foremost radiological congress for free, and this year a record number of places will be available thanks to the personal commitment of our ‘ECR VIPs’. Dignitaries, speakers, moderators, awardees and other invited guests attending ECR 2012 have generously donated their own reimbursement payments to the IITY budget, in an extremely encouraging show of support for the ESR’s rising stars.
If you’ve visited the ESR website in the last couple of months you may well have been greeted by a short but graceful animation of floating flowers and fruit, accompanied by the sounds of birdsong and a glimpse of lilting accordian music. This little clip has been put together as a ‘teaser movie’ for ECR 2012, and the more observant among you may even have noticed the visual connection with the ECR 2012 poster, which uses Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s painting Spring (a figure composed entirely of seasonal vegetation) placed back-to-back with a ‘radiographic’ mirror image. This teaser movie takes individual elements of the original painting to make an airy collage that hints at the poster and hopefully conjures up a slightly more conventional springtime atmosphere than Arcimboldo’s nonetheless fascinating creation!
