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Q&A with Paul M. Parizel, president of the European Society of Radiology
by Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | February 28, 2017
HCB News: How is the ESR preparing for the future?
PP: Preparing for the future can be daunting, as by the time one’s preparations are complete, there is often a whole new set of challenges ahead. This is why the ESR has adopted a rather ‘open-ended’ approach for our activities, allowing for them to be adapted and extended as times change. The future from the point of view of the ESR is to help current and future radiologists to fulfill their potential and provide the best possible health care. That means providing education and professional tools that help them to develop, but it also means providing the surrounding infrastructure such as curricula and certification. In all of these areas, the ESR has its finger on the pulse. Two particularly good examples are the European Training Curriculum for Radiology (ETCR) and the new eLearning platform, Education on Demand. A lot of work has gone into making the ETCR comprehensive and useful to radiologists at different stages of professional development.
The key characteristic is that the ETCR is a ‘living document,’ designed to be regularly updated. By necessity, education should reflect the reality of current daily practice. Otherwise, considering the rapid rate of progress in radiology, we are preparing people for a professional environment that is already outdated. Therefore, the ESR Education Committee conducts a regular review of the ETCR to ensure that we are guiding radiologists in the right direction. The educational resources on the ESR’s eLearning platform are also regularly extended and updated to achieve the targets set out in the ETCR. The final dimension of this is the European Diploma in Radiology (EDiR), which assesses candidates’ ability using the ETCR as a reference, meaning diploma holders have a qualification that very accurately reflects their competence in the modern world of radiology.
The EDiR is open to candidates from all over the world, and not just Europeans. It is rapidly becoming an important standard of quality for radiologists throughout the world who are applying for a job or for a promotion. Quality of care, patient safety and standards in radiology continue to be priority areas for the ESR. A number of pilot implementations of the ESR iGuide, the clinical decision support platform using ESR imaging referral guidelines, started this year. We published 19 basic clinical audit templates (level I), and in 2017, will complete the ESR Audit Tool with a range of general service templates (level II), plus our work with the RSNA on developing templates for structured reporting continued throughout 2016. In the area of radiation protection, tremendous progress was made by the EuroSafe Imaging campaign with the establishment of dedicated subgroups on image quality and clinical DRLs, as well as the new Euro-Safe Imaging Stars initiative that creates a network of imaging institutions committed to best practice in patient safety.
