Creating a sense of professional belonging and value

Understanding the needs of the hybrid nuclear medicine practitioner, in terms of their need for on-going training, knowledge, skills enhancement and optimisation of technology has been integral to my doctoral research.  However, recently I have begun to understand the additional need to ensure practitioners and patients are included in the creation / development of new treatment pathways. 

Has technology begun to remove the personal nature / approach within nuclear medicine?  Creating physical barriers in the form of control rooms (image below), intercoms, cctv and an array of computer workstations potentially retracts the practitioner from the patient and how is autonomous practice / decision making take place?

 

 

There is a need to ensure the hybrid workforce understand the new clinical environments they find themselves in and value themselves as a profession.  Also, how do you fit the humanistic aspects of work into a technologically focused environment?  For example, hybrid nuclear medicine practitioners are seeing patients earlier in the cancer treatment cycle and this requires a greater understanding of where that patient is in terms of the support required, which aspect of the Kubler Ross cycle are they currently in and how can the practitioner ensure they obtain information in the form of functional and anatomical information coupled with appropriate patient preparation.

 

 

These themes have begun to arise from my research and allowed me to have greater insight into the complex emerging culture within hybrid imaging.