It seems as thought the world has become a very different place since our last newsletter. As I write this, I find myself cycling through an entire range of emotions: concern for loved ones’ health, preoccupation with our clinic caseload and the livelihoods of my wonderful radiology team, anxiety that I am following COVID-19 prevention measures properly, frustration that we did not do more to prevent this and optimism that we will come through this better and more cooperative. I feel fortunate that we are in a profession that many consider essential and that we are in a specialty that has embraced telemedicine and that has high digital literacy. These strengths should help carry us through the uncertain months ahead.
Increased biosafety measures have caused widespread restrictions in teaching hospitals worldwide. This has had an immediate disruptive effect on our residency programs in a number of ways: decreased caseload, a reduction in teaching and support personnel and numerous preventive/illness-related absences. Executive Council, RSEC (DI, EDI and RO) and the Examination Directors have worked to develop temporary measures to support both Residency Directors and residents in some continuity of clinical training, including increased flexibility on what constitutes a clinical case as well as in accepted methods of resident feedback and supervision. We will see in the coming weeks if these measures have been helpful for programs to weather the initial COVID-19 storm. We are encouraging collaboration between programs and with outside radiologists. Please reach out if you have some time to provide cases and feedback.
We are optimistic that the Preliminary DI and Certifying Radiation Oncology Examinations will take place as scheduled in August, with a video proctoring system that eliminates the need for travel. We are evaluating a number of alternatives for the DI and EDI Certifying Examinations. Please follow the Residency Discourse thread for the latest updates.
COVID-19 does not only affect our residency programs, but the livelihood of our specialty as a whole, be it as a road warrior having to navigate mobile ultrasound appointments, a radiologist seeing a decrease in teleradiology cases, or trying to work in a now not so busy referral hospital. I would like to encourage discussion and collaboration between members about how you are dealing with this new reality.
Regarding Maintenance of Certification, migration of the MOC database from the old website to the new website was not as smooth as we had hoped. For some diplomates, the move was seamless and for others, not so much. For this reason, we have decided to develop a more modern database over the coming months. In the meanwhile, for diplomates enrolled in the MOC system are strongly encouraged to save documentation of MOC collected to date, just in case.
The Consensus Statement Oversight Committee has reviewed the survey results regarding next topic will announce the topic once it is approved by Executive Council. Thank you to all those who participated in the survey, and watch this space!
If one thing has become clear from this pandemic, it is that we are all in this together. Much health, hope and resolve to our entire ACVR family.
Dr. Kate Alexander
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Nominating Committee Update
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The In-Training Examination Committee (ITEC) is in need of new members
WE NEED YOUR HELP.
ITEC is a collaborative effort between ACVR and ECVDI with aims to support residents and residency programs. ITEC will provide mock examinations and feedback prior to high stakes preliminary/theoretical examinations. Our first mock exam is in development and set to roll out in summer/fall 2020.
Ideal ITEC members are volunteer diplomates with
at least one
of the following qualifications:
- recent board certification
- interest in residency training
- interest in giving back and/or supporting residency programs
- excitement about international collaboration within our specialty
- skill in (or motivation to learn) best practices for writing exam questions
- familiarity with electronic testing platforms (e.g. Examsoft)
ITEC members may NOT be:
- current ACVR/ECVDI exam committee members
- rotated off of ACVR/ECVDI exam committees in the past year
The
Consensus Statement Oversight Committee
(CSOC) is in need of a new member
CSOC Chair Dr. Jen Bouma is looking for a general committee member for CSOC, starting in May 2020. The CSOC is the committee that determines consensus statement topics and then forms and oversees the subcommittees of experts to develop those consensus statements through to completion.
Ideal CSOC members are volunteer diplomates with the following attributes:
- Availability during established CSOC meeting times, which are Monday or Wednesdays at 12:30-1:30, occasionally until 2 or 2:30 EST.
- Willing to perform tasks outside of our meeting times as needed. This may involve contact and/or meeting with editor of VRU, emailing contacts in other specialty colleges, reviewing and editing our P&P documents as needed, helping to develop surveys, writing up our meeting minutes, and archiving our documents.
Anyone who is interested is please asked to email
Dr. Nathan Nelson (
ncnelso2@ncsu.edu
)
, head of the ACVR Nominating Committee. If you have any questions on the roles and responsibilities of committee members, you can contact Dr. Jen Bouma (
Jennifer.Bouma@antechimagingservices.com
).
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ACVR Thanks IDEXX for their support with the 2019 Annual Scientific Conference.
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Veterinary Radiology & Ultrasound Journal
A printed copy of
Veterinary Radiology & Ultrasound
is available for $120 under the Physical Goods tab on the
ACVR Shop
.
Electronic access is included in your membership dues.
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ACVR Job Emails Have Changed
ACVR will no longer be sending out weekly job board updates. Instead, ACVR members can opt-in to receive automatic job posting notifications to provide them with instant access to new jobs.
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Click here
to view the current jobs posted on ACVR's Job Board.
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Time to Renew Your Society Memberships
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Society Dues: Diplomate - $30; Resident - Complimentary
Societies:
- Ultrasound
- LADIS
- CT/MRI
- Nuclear Medicine
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To access Discourse from your dashboard, find the “thought bubble” on the bottom left-hand side:
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Once selected, you will be prompted to log in again.
Use the same username/password as you use to log in to ACVR.org.
The
LEFT
side of the page has different groups and allows you to venture into posting a topic into different groups. The “General Discussion” is for
ALL
ACVR discussion and is accessible to all members. If you belong to a Society, your discourse discussion board can be accessed by clicking on “Societies”
(you must belong to a society and be up-to-date on your dues payment).
Some may also be able to access more specific/private groups for “ACVR Diplomates” and “ACVR Residents”.
Please note: your pageview is unique to your membership and may not look identical to the example shown below.
The
RIGHT
side of the page shows the most recent posts from the group that you belong to:
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New Topics
To create a new topic, select the “New Topic” icon on the right hand side of your screen:
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Notifications
Discourse email notifications are a feature that you
must opt-in to in order to receive notifications
of other discussions. By default, you will only receive email notifications of responses to the posts that YOU create. You can receive posts of ALL the action on Discourse by changing your settings:
Go to the top of Discourse and click on your face
(if you have not uploaded a profile picture, it will be a circle with a letter in it):
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Then, click your username (for me, it’s vetimagingny); under that scroll down, choose PREFERENCES:
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Under preferences, choose EMAILS and be sure to ENABLE MAILING LIST MODE (check box.) My set up looks like this:
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Be sure to save your changes when finished.
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Contribute to Next Months
Insights e-Newsletter!
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