A really interesting article.
The Society and College’s Director of Professional Policy has identified two major developments that she believes will shape the future of radiography: molecular imaging and theranostics (the fusion of therapeutics and diagnostics).
Professor Audrey Paterson gave the Stanley Melville Memorial Lecture at the last UKRC she will attend after almost 40 years in the profession (she is planning to retire next April).
Audrey warned delegates that great opportunities were coming but, unless they were grasped enthusiastically, there was a danger that other health and medical practitioners will grab the openings that they present.
Against a backdrop of increasing personalised medicine, tailored to the needs of the individual and their condition, the challenges brought about by genomics, nanotechnology and computing power will, according to one commentator, be a normal part of healthcare by 2020.
Audrey said that personalised medicine will raise questions about the nature of radiographer roles’, the scope of practice and, most critically, provide new education and training challenges. She reminded delegates that radiographers are already practising SPECT, PET, MRI, CT and hybrid imaging, as well as supporting patients at the interface of science, technology and medicine.
The profession is carrying out demanding, complex image acquisition, understanding what appears on the image, working as part of integrated healthcare teams, and it has a specialist clinical focus.
“Is this a good basis for future development?” she asked delegates.
She queried the rate of development of the new technologies and how prepared the profession really is. For example, the Royal College of Radiologists has already stated that it will ‘promote the development of molecular imaging in the UK.’ New inter-professional relationships are already being established but are radiographers prepared for the changes to come?
Evolution or revolution?
Audrey presented two scenarios: one, that the new developments will be evolutionary, being applied at few centres, to a relatively small number of patients, meaning that treatment would be expensive. The alternative is revolutionary: rapid development leading to costs going down, fuelled by public demand.
She asked if radiographer education and training will be able to meet the new challenges. Is there sufficient current scientific knowledge? Is anatomical knowledge integrated with human physiology and biology? Do we understand system, organ and cellular functioning? How do we address education and training when current practice is so very different?
To ensure that radiography and radiographers have a future, Audrey suggested that the profession must recognise the impact of personalised medicine; embrace molecular imaging and theranostics explicitly within the scope of practice; engage with the wider scientific and medical community on the developments; evolve in-depth understanding of implications for the role of the radiographer; and publish and promote a position paper.
She raised two possible courses of events: first, that the profession’s scope of practice would become vast as the ‘old’ was retained and the ‘new’ was embraced. Radiographers would become fully embedded in molecular imaging. The second was that the profession would contract to serve a diminishing need for anatomical imaging, whilst molecular would become embedded in the healthcare sciences.
“Whatever happens,” she remarked, “the explosion in the growth of molecular imaging will lead to massive development and change ahead. Radiographer roles will still be relevant, regardless of which scenario develops.
“Radiographers are the ‘best fit’ to be the molecular imaging workforce but, to ensure that this happens, education and training must change, and start to change now.”
Link to full article: http://www.sor.org/ezines/toptalk/issue-106/future-radiography-can-it-survive