The views that the author expresses in this article are strictly their own and should not be attributed to the American College of Radiology.

• As interest in performing and interpreting imaging rises among non-radiologist physicians, many residents are becoming concerned about maintaining access to certain imaging modalities – both for training and future practice.
• To further evaluate this issue, an electronic survey was composed by the ACR Resident and Fellow Section to assess residents' exposure to professional turf battles during their residency, and to assess perceptions about the causes, solutions and impact of turf battles on resident education. 168 senior US radiology residents from the Class of 2005 completed the survey. The majority of respondents (over 90%) feel that professional turf battles have had a significant impact upon their education, particularly within the subspecialties of interventional radiology, ultrasound and cardiac imaging. The majority of respondents perceive inadequate training in the affected subspecialties due to lost professional turf within their institution. Methods recommended by residents to counter professional turf battles include the promotion of national physician training standards for diagnostic imaging and image-guided therapies, and the mandatory accreditation of imaging facilities. These recommendations mirror the most recent proposals by the ACR to support mandatory national quality, safety and training standards for providers of diagnostic imaging.

• Recent studies show that the shortage of radiologists is abating. Furthermore, the addition of teleradiologists to the workforce has some concerned about the coming state of job availability in radiology. This may already be affecting residents' post training plans, with more residents choosing to pursue fellowships.
• Read more about the end of the radiologist shortage:
  • http://radiology.rsnajnls.org/cgi/content/abstract/200/2/545
  • http://www.rsna.org/Publications/rsnanews/oct05/RadiologistShortage.cfm
• Read more about post training plans:
  
  • The Radiology Class of 2005: Postresidency Plans
    Shetty SK, Venkatesan AM, Foster KM, Galdino GM, Lawrimore TM, Davvila JA
    Journal of the American College of Radiology - October 2005 (Vol. 2, Issue 10, Pages 852-858)

• Utilization of imaging is continually increasing – and there is greater demand for a "24 hour radiology department", with a full complement of imaging services available overnight and on call. What's more, teleradiology has added to the call responsibilities at many institutions, with residents covering not only their own hospitals, but "cross town" and even "cross state"! As the on call radiology residents, we are perhaps most affected by these changes and have noticed it in several ways:
• Call workload. Many residents are noticing increasing workloads on call. The ACR-RFS has recently conducted a survey of radiology residents regarding their call responsibilities. Finding out what is a standard amount of responsibility for an on-call resident will help us to fight for residents who are being asked to take on too much.
• Overnight Attending Coverage. There have been many anecdotal reports of increasing demand from referring clinicians for attending reads overnight. The RFS is planning a survey to investigate this trend further.

• UPDATE - NRMP Radiology Fellowship Match
• Many residents have concerns about the process of the relatively new NRMP Fellowship Match. It is working? Are programs following the rules? The RFS has been active in investigating the process and members of the RFS have published 2 articles in JACR about it. We have also actively engaged the radiology leaders who organize the Match to express the views of residents. The RFS is interested in hearing about your personal experiences with the fellowship match.
• Learn more:
  • The Radiology Class of 2005: The Fellowship Application Process and Perceptions of the NRMP Fellowship Match
    Shetty SK, Venkatesan AM, Foster KM, Galdino GM, Lawrimore Tm, Davila JA
    Journal of the American College of Radiology - November 2005 (Vol. 2, Issue 11, Pages 939-951)
  • National radiology fellowship match program: success or failure?
    Arenson RL
    Journal of the American College of Radiology - March 2004 (Vol. 1, Issue 3, Pages 188-191)

• Many residents have voiced concern about the amount of exposure to MRI that they are receiving in their training. The RFS and ACR have responded by creating an MRI Case Database, which will focus on MSK, Body, and Cardiac MR, three areas to which residents have the least exposure. This database will feature searchable teaching files of common and uncommon MR diagnoses.
• Coming Soon!

• Working together with the ARRO, the RFS helped to change an ABR policy that would have unfairly restricted radiation oncology residents' leave during training. Under this policy, radiation oncology residents would have been restricted to 16 weeks of leave throughout the duration of residency training, allowing no flexibility for personal or maternity/paternity leave. The RFS and ARRO together were able to secure a more flexible leave policy from the ABR on behalf of all radiation oncology residents

• The RFS is working together with the ARRO to ensure that more complete rationales are made available for the Radiation Oncology in-training exam.

• The RFS has been a strong force in shaping the scope of practice of the newly created Radiologist Assistant position. At a recent ACR National Meeting, the RFS successfully worked to change ACR policy to limit the responsibilities of Radiologist Assistants and specifically exclude diagnostic interpretation from their scope of practice.
• We have also actively engaged the leadership of the ARRT and ACR on this issue, to ensure that the Radiologist Assistant fits within the needs of our future practice.