by
Diana Bradley, Staff Writer | November 19, 2012
From the November 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
DMBN: Is there any big challenge facing radiologists or the practice of radiology that you’re particularly concerned about at the moment?
GB: We need to put patients first as one of our responsibilities as radiologists and we need to play a bigger role as part of the care team for the patient. Radiologists have to become more integrated into this patient-centered care team. In keeping with the theme of “patients first,” one of the things I am going to talk about at the meeting is radiologists’ need to take ownership of patients. When you listen to radiologists talk, they talk about “the” patients, rather than “our” patients. To ensure the visibility of our profession with patients and colleagues, we need to share in that ownership. There are lots of ways we can improve how we interact with patients. That will be the focus of my presidential address and I hope the message hits home.
Another challenge is managing and dealing with all of the information that we ingest. I look back over my career and realize that when I started we just had to review a few images and render dictated reports; now we are managing so much more information. While mobile and wireless technologies can simplify access to information, managing all of the data can create additional stressors for us. So we have to figure out how to manage these IT-intensive platforms that we are now dealing with.
DMBN: What advice or warning would you offer to people looking to move into the radiology field?
GB: Advice? I don’t remember a day I have awakened and regretted my decision to go into radiology. It’s a great field. We are involved with all of the interesting patients and clinicians in the hospital. We are the diagnosticians. The only advice I can give people contemplating entering the field of radiology is “go for it.” I can’t think of a better profession. Warnings? It’s a competitive, challenging, long road.
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