| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
Letters to the Editor |
,
Fred Avni, MD, PhD
, for the European Society of Pediatric Radiology
* Department of Radiology, Academic Medical Centre, Meibergdreef 9, Amsterdam 1105 AZ, the Netherlands
e-mail: r.r.vanrijn{at}amc.uva.nl
Department of Pediatric Radiology, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital NHS Trust, London, England
Department of Imaging, Erasme Hospital, Brussels, Belgium
We read the article by Drs Bramson and Taylor (1), regarding the future of pediatric radiology, with great interest. The problems addressed in their article, which was published in the June 2005 issue of Radiology, actually are not only relevant to the United States of America but are prevalent across Europe as the declining interest in pediatric radiology has resulted in pediatric radiology staff posts left unfilled and unrecruited.
However, we feel the need to address these issues in a positive light and as such, within the European Society of Pediatric Radiology (ESPR), we have taken up this challenge in a proactive manner with the formation of a young pediatric radiologists' task force. Within the ESPR, the problem of the declining number of pediatric radiologists has also been recognized, and it was not by chance that the motto of our 2004 annual meeting was "young pediatric radiologists—the future." We believe, and thus agree with Drs Bramson and Taylor, that it is important to encourage radiology residents to choose pediatric radiology and perhaps even more important to retain their enthusiasm for this pluripotential specialty.
We believe that education plays an important role in achieving and maintaining the enthusiasm that is important to encourage radiology residents to choose pediatric radiology as their preferred career choice. Since 1991, the ESPR has organized courses within subspecialties of pediatric radiology, including chest, skeletal, abdominal, gastrointestinal and genitourinary, emergency, and neuroradiology. These annual congresses are held in the autumn in different European cities and are led by local pediatric radiologists alongside international speakers eminent in the subspecialty to be addressed. The courses are very well attended and therefore indicate an existing underlying interest for pediatric radiology within the junior radiologic society.
The formation within the ESPR of the more recent initiative of a junior pediatric radiology forum (JESPeR) constituted the installation of a task force aimed at residents and junior radiologists interested in pediatric radiology (2). JESPeR is aimed at generating both a social and an interactive collegiate atmosphere among young radiologists to encourage them to choose this field as their area of interest. The first meeting of this group took place at the annual ESPR meeting in Genoa, Italy, in 2003. Since then, JESPeR has organized "how I do it" lectures, aimed at junior pediatric radiologists and residents, at the 2004 and 2005 ESPR congresses. The aim of these lectures is to disperse the tips and tricks that can be readily learned from more senior pediatric radiology colleagues, and many of these "gems" cannot be found in textbooks. The atmosphere of these meetings is encouraged to be open and interactive, and attendants are invited to participate in the active and lively discussion. JESPeR also aims to increase social coherence between junior pediatric radiologists and residents (something that is paramount to established societies such as the ESPR and its American counterpart, the Society for Pediatric Radiology [SPR]) and cannot be underemphasized as a role for these important societies. We truly believe that by making junior pediatric radiologists feel welcome within the ESPR, enthusiasm for our existing specialty can only be enhanced.
Once again, we would like to stress the role of the ESPR and SPR societies and to encourage the positive aspects of this wonderful subject to better attract candidates into the exciting and growing subspecialty of pediatric radiology. The future may be brighter than we think!
 |
References |
|---|
 TOP References Reference |
|---|
Department of Radiology, The Children's Hospital, 300 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115
e-mail: robert.bramson@childrens.harvard.edu
We thank Drs Van Rijn, Owens, and Avni for their encouraging letter concerning our recent article in Radiology (1).
It is no secret that the problems that we described are not unique to the United States. Europe and other global areas suffer from the same shortage of pediatric radiologists.
The initiatives of the ESPR are to be applauded. We urge them to continue those efforts and extend the aura of collegiality down into more junior levels of medical training. We are thinking particularly of aiming more lectures, meetings, and workshops toward medical students, pediatric residents, and radiology residents early in their training. If we can persuade younger physicians to enter the field, we can succeed in our efforts to augment the ranks of pediatric radiologists for the benefit of our pediatric patients and their families.
The historical cooperation between the ESPR and its North American counterpart, the SPR, has been outstanding. Together these two organizations have worked to promote the mission of pediatric radiology. Our main hope in writing the article was to get the attention of radiology leaders outside of the field of pediatric radiology. We wanted to point out the problems and the potential ramifications to radiology leaders throughout our profession. These leaders are both more numerous and often more influential than are we. Pediatric radiologists cannot solve this problem by themselves. They need the help of the most influential leaders in radiology—thus our SOS.
|
Reference |
|---|
|
TOPReferencesReference |
|---|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| RADIOLOGY | RADIOGRAPHICS | RSNA JOURNALS ONLINE |
