Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2016
Keywords:
Action 12 - Cooperation with international radiation protection initiatives and other stakeholders including IAEA, WHO, ICRP, HERCA, European Commission, Action 10 - Improved communication and collaboration of health professionals in radiation protection, Action 6 - Education and training in medical radiation protection, Action 8 - Radiation protection training and learning material, Action 13 - Stakeholder engagement and collaboration
Authors:
P. Butler, W. W. Mayo-Smith, R. Morin, W. Creech, D. Dunne, K. Galvin, M. Millette, D. P. Frush
DOI:
10.1594/esi2016/ESI-0016
Description of activity and work performed
Image Wisely Website
The website includes routinely-updated content on safe practices in CT,
nuclear medicine and fluoroscopy for radiologists,
medical physicists,
imaging technologists,
referring practitioners and patients.
The front page features links to current radiation stories in the media (“News”),
safety-related journal articles and reports (“What We’re Reading”) and important information on US regulations and standards impacting medical imaging (“Regulations & Standards Updates”).
The Executive Committee regularly reviews and updates all Image Wisely® content for accuracy,
currency and interest to the radiology community.
There were over 67,000 visits to imagewisely.org in July - December 2015.
Most visitors were from the United States (60%) but a growing number are from outside the US.
(See Table 1.)
Pledges
Pledging can be viewed as an indication of awareness.
Radiology professionals,
referring physicians,
imaging facilities and associations/educational program pledges have increased significantly since Image Wisely’s launch; as of January 2016,
40,000 individuals,
imaging facilities and associations pledged to Image Wisely®.
Figure 2 shows a 37% increase in pledges from January 2015.
In order to simplify Image Wisely® pledging,
make it more meaningful,
guide traffic to the Image Wisely® website and complement the new Joint Commission requirements (see below),
ACR and RSNA leadership has approved a new pledge approach for 2016:
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All pledges are now only valid for 1 year.
(As shown in Figure 3,
the iconic Image Wisely® owl logo available to pledging facilities has been modified to reflect the year of the pledge.)
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The 3 current imaging facility pledge levels were consolidated to a single,
all-inclusive pledge that requires accreditation and participation in a dose index registry.
Image Wisely Radiation Safety Cases
Eight free Image Wisely Radiation Safety Cases have been published since September 2013 and they remain one of the most popular educational programs offered through ACR.
As of January 2016,
over 12,000 individuals enrolled in the cases; Figure 4 shows a 189% increase in enrollment since January 2015.
Recognition by the Medical Community
Recognition by Regulators
Recognition by Lay Media
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Image Wisely® gained further recognition in 2015 in a January Consumer Reports article,
“When to Question X-rays and CT Scans when they advised patients to check whether the “radiology professional,
imaging facility,
or referring physician has joined efforts to reduce the overuse of medical imaging,
such as Image Gently,
which focuses on children,
and Image Wisely for adults.”