How will we teach and practice nuclear medicine in the next decade in Europe?

Abstract

In the next decade, nuclear medicine physicians in Europe will try to guarantee a more homogeneous level of training and education of their specialty throughout the continent. In routine nuclear medicine, they will focus more on the possibilities and availability of positron-emission tomography (PET) and on nuclear medicine therapy. Nuclear medicine physicians will be more active and interactive with students at the universities and will offer more lectures and more active training in the specialty. Nuclear medicine specialists will try to be even more interactive with clinicians and make their specialty open and better understandable for other disciplines. Nuclear medicine physicians will initiate more cost-benefit studies and more multicenter studies to prove that their procedures are evidence-based. They will communicate more intensively with industry for a better understanding of clinical problems and for development of new useful radiopharmaceuticals. They will promote their specialty in the public more intensively and will reasonably explain the risks and benefits of radionuclide examinations. Copyright (C) 2000 by W.B. Saunders Company.