by
Carol Ko, Staff Writer | June 14, 2013
From the June 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Training Wheels
Training is another looming challenge for this sector. As molecular imaging becomes increasingly multidisciplinary, the field must rethink and reconfigure its training programs to help nuclear medicine professionals keep up with evolving technology. In particular, the dominance of PET/CT, which has replaced PET, poses a serious challenge for traditional nuclear medicine specialists that only have familiarity with PET, or the nuclear imaging side.
Because most nuclear technologists are not certified to operate CT, graduates in nuclear medicine are frequently passed over in favor of radiologists. In fact, in 2012, the American Society of Radiologic Technologists reported that 43 percent of nuclear medicine graduates were unemployed after graduation.
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On the other hand, experts say many radiologists run into the opposite problem: they’re undertrained in nuclear medicine. Nuclear scans use radiopharmaceuticals, or radioactive agents and many radiologists don’t have the training to handle radioactive material or to read nuclear scans.
Furthermore, professionals in both fields are still undertrained in using combined modalities. “This is not just an issue in the U.S. but in Europe as well,“ says Dr. Andrei Iagaru, assistant professor of radiology at Stanford University.
Professional societies have taken steps to try to remedy the issue. In 2011, both the Society of Nuclear Medicine and the European Society of Radiology released recommendations to improve cross-modality training. SNM’s recommendations in particular seek to add more radiology training to nuclear medicine programs to help recast nuclear medicine graduates as qualified candidates for radiology positions.
In one article published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, author Steven M. Larson puts it more succinctly: “The term nuclear medicine is really a synonym for molecular imaging and therapy,” he writes.
PET/CT
The first generation of PET/CT scanners, introduced over a decade ago, was very rudimentary by today’s standards: a single slice spiral CT integrated with a PET camera. Now PET/CT’s dominance is such that major manufacturers don’t even produce standalone PET machines anymore.
