Norman E. Bolus, MSPH, MPH, CNMT, FSNMMI-TS
The SNMMI 2014 annual meeting, which was held in St. Louis, Missouri, June 7–11, 2014, was another great meeting that celebrated 60 years of SNMMI. The Technologist Section program chair, Eleanor Mantel, put together a great program consisting of a broad range of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging topics. I always enjoy the annual meeting as a time to meet colleagues and catch up on what is new in the field. One who goes only for continuing education credit or VOICE credit might ask why a live meeting is important when these credits can be obtained online without travel to distant places. Well, there are many reasons why a face-to-face meeting and a live lecture are important. The most important reason is establishing contacts with people who can get to know you at the meetings and outside the meetings at other functions associated with it. You never know when a person who has met you and remembers you may be important in your future for a number of different reasons, employment being one. The biggest advantage of live meetings is getting to know the colleagues who live and work in different areas of the world but who often share some of the same problems, issues, and concerns that you do. Commiserating with others can be a cathartic experience and help one to realize shared concerns for our field. In a live lecture, one has the opportunity to ask questions and even approach the speaker afterward to follow up on details. I am an advocate of attending meetings as they are often the life blood of a society. Without good attendance at meetings, a society may not be able to afford to do many of the functions that make it a society. It is a place at which businesses can showcase their products and demonstrate new offerings in the field, and it allows a forum to exchange new ideas. It is also a way to gauge what is important in the field or profession. So go ahead and put the 2015 SNMMI meetings on your calendar. The mid-winter meeting will be in San Antonio, Texas, January 22–25, 2015, and the annual meeting will be in Baltimore, Maryland, June 6–10, 2015. I hope to see you there.
“Life: a cycle. A series of events, meetings, and departures. Friends discovered, others lost, Precious time, wastes away. Big droplet tears are shed for yesterday, but are dried in time for tomorrow, until all that remain are foggy, broken memories of a happy yesteryear.”
—Daniela Gallo
In this issue of JNMT, there is one original continuing education offering in the form of a practice guideline concerning Meckel diverticulum. The other continuing education offering, entitled “Radioiodine Scintigraphy with SPECT/CT: An Important Diagnostic Tool for Thyroid Cancer Staging and Risk Stratification,” is a reprint from the JNM from May 2012. Please be aware that if you have already taken the exam and received continuing education credit for this article, then you cannot receive credit twice. There are several imaging educational articles ranging from time-of-flight issues, ambient temperature and cardiac accumulation of 18F-FDG, and 131I uptake methods, to hepatobiliary scintigraphy classification concerning enterogastric reflux. There is also a radiopharmacy article concerning an automated production technique with 18F and 5 case studies on a variety of imaging examinations. An interesting professional development article concerning the reduction of patient anxiety in PET/CT imaging by improving patient and technologist communication is also in this issue. Finally, there is a book review on the new Quick Reference Protocol Manual for Nuclear Medicine Technologists from the SNMMI, which I highly recommend.
For this issue, I would like the Facebook discussion to surround the question, “Do you agree or disagree that one should attend an annual meeting for our society and why?” Please go www.snm.org/facebook to add your comments.
Finally, I would like to congratulate Nikki Wenzel-Lamb (director of leadership and SNMMI-TS administrator) and her husband on their newborn son. Best wishes for a long and healthy life together to the new family.
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