SNM 2010 - Post your experience

[partusa]

I just arrived from the SNM @ Salt Lake City. I will be posting my experience soon.
To all the residents who attended to the residents meeting, please share your experience, feeling and concerns!

Please, share your experience!!

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[partusa]

Well, to be honest I don't know where to start. I will try to be concise.
On Saturday and Sunday I attended to the board review, which was surprisingly full of people, not only residents, probably attendings in current practice who want to refresh their knowledge . The course was OK, but I will not comment on this, because this topic is secondary, right?

The job placement stand: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nmra/4692734216/)
Completely depressing!! Almost all those postings were actually from Nuclear Medicine Physicians and of course NO JOB POSTINGS, as expected!! This picture was taken during the second day of the meeting, by the end of the meeting, those walls were almost full.
There was a lunch with some guy, which I don't know who he was, but I believe he was from the young professionals committee or NMRO, anyways, he was trying to guide the residents in how to write a good CV and be competitive in the field. He was showing examples of what not to write in a CV, to check the spelling, grammar, etc... basic stuff that any recent medical graduate applying for residency knows. To be honest, I went to get a free meal, probably like most of the other residents. We talked about this topic before, not even with a perfect resume we can get a NM job, we all know why!

The following day, we have the residents meeting with Dr.Segal, Vice-president of the SNM, Dr.Grady from the NMRO and other important representatives from the ABNM and SNM.
Dr. Grady, gave a brief presentation and then the mic was open for the residents to talk.
I want to congratulate the resident from UCLA, who bravely stood up and talked about the crisis. After her, several residents and fellows from different programs, added their comments and concerns. Residents from top institutions in the country were there, meaning that this is a crisis that is not only affecting small programs.
I will not go over all the details, but in general all the topics that we discussed in the forum were discussed in the meeting.
Dr.Segal and the rest of the representatives, tried to reply to every question that we had, they tried to support us and they also mentioned that they are working in a solution along with the ACR, but no exact details were given.
The meeting lasted almost 90 minutes, at the end I asked one of the residents who was with me, if he can summarize the solutions that were discussed during the meeting, of course, he said, I don't know! No specific solutions were discussed, nothing was clear; nobody gave us any probable solutions.
What I heard at the end, is that by the end of this year, there will be news, however the society will not be able to help the residents graduating this year.
The ''good'' news!
Job postings at the SNM website are going to be free, that will help the radiologist to get more NM jobs!!
Any updates or communication with the residents will be posted in the SNM or ABNM website at the residents section.
You can become a member of the ACNM for free, however this is only for the first 12 months, after that period, we will have to pay the membership.
I cannot recall any other ''good'' news.
Anyone who is interested, the ACR has free membership for residents, including NM residents and you can fill the form online!

I believe that nothing is going to happen with this crisis. I don't see any changes coming soon.

If you attended to the SNM meeting, please share your experience!

Thank you for reading.

 

[gathi]

thanks for the information.
the job center pic is really scary.
as you said, there will be some news from SNM. what kind of news can we expect? does SNM have a strong voice to convince other organizations like ABR or ACR or ACGME to work in direction of welfare of NM residents?
do the PDs have some idea? does it look like something has already been developed and decided at the backstage?
what can be a reasonable expectation - NM disappearing as a separate specialty and merging into rads? some regulatory change in reading NM scans? some back up plan for NM residents like providing them rads training?
did SNM discuss any of these options?
i think NMRO is not focused on the main issues presently. i totally agree that making impressive CVs or improvement in networking and communication is very secondary when the marketability is zero!
can NMRO get involved in this forum and throw some light on future of NM residents, as they may be in contact with SNM and other leaders? at least, give some hint for the future news....

 

[doc10]

Make sure you read what Siegel from Mallinkrodt says:
http://wuphysicians.wustl.edu/page.aspx?pageID=173


"My vision is probably not one that would make a lot of nuclear medicine people happy, but, I frankly see nuclear medicine fading into diagnostic radiology as a radiology subspecialty. I think it is the only way it is going to be able to survive."


Unfortunately his vision is reality. According to the past president of SNM, the SNM Board of Directors are not aligned with his ideas about pushing for major changes at the reimbursement level (that can prevent general radiologists from doing all our procedures including therapy).


[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]Good luck getting the current SNM Board to take action. Of course you can still negotiate or try to create a job in Nuclear Medicine, but for USA, I could not agree more with Dr. Siegel..