The ACR Needs You: Serve as a Resident Grassroots Committee Liaison

摘要

Radiology residents across the country are organizing in defense of our future profession and in defense of the patients we have the privilege to care for. This article explains why and how.The reason for organizing this "call to arms" is simple. If we fail to band together as the younger generation of a professional society that stands up for our interests and the interests of our patients, the long-term ramifications will be devastating. As Ben Franklin once said, "We either hang together, or we hang separately." Remaining on the sidelines equates to allowing non-radiologists to encroach into our world of expertise and to perform substandard image acquisition and interpretation, allowing nonradi-ologist physicians to self-refer their patients for imaging for their own financial interests at a detriment to health care costs in this country, and allowing our patients to receive inappropriate uses of radiation. Furthermore, allowing these transgressions to occur will result in our specialty's paying for this indiscretion of others (evidenced by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005). Although turf battles occur throughout the field of medicine, the expansion of the scope of practice to perform and interpret imaging is by far the fiercest, precisely because of the financial stake.