Minnie Finalists Announced, Improvements In Radiology Gender Gap, & Attempts At Combatting Physician Burnout: 3 Things That Happened In Radiology This Week
It’s been an exciting week in radiology! The Minnie’s are gearing up, ASTRO is about to kick off, and we’re getting inundated with article after article from every possible direction. As usual, there were a ton of interesting bits of news that came out this week related to our industry, and if you’re as busy as we are then there’s a pretty big chance you missed out on seeing—much less actually reading—most of them. Some were research related, some were fun, and some were inspiring, but there were a few articles that really stood out to us, and that we feel like are important for people to read. Not only are they incredibly interesting, they also cover some issues and innovations concerning the radiology industry right now. Here are three pieces of news we wanted to highlight:
Aunt Minnie Announces & Highlights Minnie 2017 Finalists
The votes are in, and the finalists for the 2017 Minnie Awards have been officially announced! This week Aunt Minnie took some time to highlight and introduce all finalists in each respective category. Unsurprisingly, we were happy to see a familiar face among the finalists: Dr. Elliot Fishman. He's a bit of a regular when it comes to the Minnie awards, and we were excited to see him nominated in the following two categories this year: Most Effective Radiology Educator and Best Radiology Mobile App. You can read more about all the finalists here. Best of luck to Dr. Fishman, and to all the other incredible innovators in our industry who were nominated this year!
It's no secret that the gender gap is still incredibly present in 21st century America, particularly in the healthcare world. Radiology is no exception, and for decades we've been fighting an uphill battle trying to close the gap between genders and overcome disparities in both the percentage of female radiologists to male radiologists and the way that they're compensated. It's taken a while, but we're slowly getting closer. A recent study from the American Journal of Roentgenology shows that in the U.S., female academic radiologists make as much money as their male colleagues. It's a situation that's uncommon among many medical specialties, and it highlights the emphasis the radiology industry has placed on overcoming gender disparity. We've still got a long way to go towards achieving full equality, but it's a promising start.
Combating Burnout At NYU: "Coordinator Service" Bolsters Radiologists' Efficiency
Burnout among radiologists is a huge concern, and all across the country organizations are looking for ways to address this issue. Researchers at NYU are attempting to do so by creating a new position in the radiology department, a Reading Room Coordinator. The goal of the experiment is simple: create a position whose sole responsibility revolves around taking over the majority of tasks that don't relate specifically to image interpretation, i.e. handling requests, faxing reports, triaging phone calls, etc., eliminating that additional stress and allowing the radiologists to focus on the clinical aspects of their jobs. The researchers are hopeful that the addition of this new position will mitigate high rates of burnout and improve workflow by shouldering the burden of some of those day-to-day responsibilities and giving them more time to work on the parts of the job they enjoy. It's an intriguing approach, and we look forward to seeing whether it works out!
It’s an important time in our industry. There’s a lot of improvements being made, but there are still several very real issues that we need to work towards solving. Having an open dialogue about these topics, understanding and expressing arguments from different perspective and working together towards solutions will go a long way towards bettering our industry as a whole.