ECVDI Newsletter - July 2024
Newsletter Highlights
- Message from the President
- Member Fees (now due)
- Media Committee
- Welfare Committee Update
- Study on Radiology Reporting
- VECCUS Consensus Statement
- RIVDI
- Dates for the Diary
Message from the President
Dear All,
I hope this Newsletter finds you all well. In the Netherlands we are still waiting for the summer to come, so far, the canals and rivers have been filled by a lot of rain. At least in Athens we will be able to hopefully enjoy some sun.
The Executive Board met at the beginning of July for an extra meeting to discuss some changes to bylaws and the reevaluation form for Diplomates. You will be sent the draft of the suggested changed bylaws and reevaluation form for Diplomates before the AGM in Athens where we will present and vote on both the changed bylaws and reevaluation for Diplomates. Please read carefully through the changes.
I have attended several ACVR Board meetings and feel that the cooperation between ECVDI and ACVR is getting closer since we are dealing with the same issues and also problems. I am also very happy to announce that the ACVR president Ryan King will attend the next Board meeting in person, along with the EVDI meeting in Athens. Please help Ryan to feel welcomed in Athens to further improve and extend the collaboration between ACVR and ECVDI.
Our different committees have been working hard and as a President I have regular contact with the chairs of several different committees. I genuinely enjoy this contact experiencing the hard work these committees perform to improve and bring forward our College. I cannot thank the Committee Members enough for all their efforts and time they put in their Committee and therefore advancing the ECVDI.
Job Task Analysis (JTA)
The JTA survey has been sent to all Diplomates, Residents and Associates and closed on Monday 15.07.2024. The JTA is very important to help us to direct the future of our profession and mission of our College and to improve and actualize the current certification examination. I realize that everyone is extremely busy and also that some will not agree that the JTA is important. I would like to thank everyone who took the time and effort to complete the JTA. Leaves me to send out a big ‘thank you’ to the JTA committee and Rob Malinowski for the time and effort they put in making the JTA 2024.
We will present first results at the AGM in Athens.
Upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM) Reminder
The next AGM is planned on the 21st of September, 2024 at the EVDI Congress in Athens, Greece. We will continue with the possibility of attending the AGM virtually (remote attendance will be accepted as fulfilling the requirements of attendance for the reaccreditation), even though we do hope members will come in person on a regular base, since we regard it very important no to be only virtually present but also in person.
If you cannot attend, please send an apology to Catherine Barclay (adminecvdi@ecvdi.eu).
Technician Society
There have been several zoom meetings with interested technicians/radiographers together with the EAVDI President Antonella Puggioni, myself and Catherine Barclay to form a Technician Society. Meetings were very productive and the group themselves came up with the name: European Association of Veterinary Imaging Practitioners or EAVIP.
The plan is now to form several small working groups (PODs) to come with a suitable mission statement and aims/theme of the association, to make a plan for the legalities of forming such an European Association and for the financial considerations. Furthermore, one POD will work on making a spreadsheet of details to centralize prospective members, circulate a survey to find out if 'members' have as a CPD allowance, if so, what is their budget and what would they be willing to pay on a yearly basis for membership to the EAVIP.
The aim is to have an EAVIP-Day at the next EVDI congress in Sitges (near Barcelona) in 2025 with also the first membership meeting.
Again, if you know someone who would be interested, please or can help in any way, send their contact to Catherine Barclay (adminecvdi@ecvdi.eu).
Forum Discussion
The EVDI Program in Athens is very tight, so at this point, we are still looking into possibilities to make a Forum Discussion possible. Obviously the EVDI Congress is about a scientific program, so we will probably have to organize it in the early morning hours. I hope this will not discourage our Diplomates and Associates to attend the Forum Discussion. Furthermore, any suggestions for topics to discuss are welcome. Please send these either to myself (president@ecvdi.eu) or Catherine Barclay (adminecvdi@ecvdi.eu). As soon as we have worked time and topic, I will let you know.
Website
On behalf of the Media Committee, I would like to ask our DIplomates and Associates if you have any images or ideas you are willing to share for our website, for instance as the banner on the first page.
If you have any images you think would be nice and would like to share (we will need permission to post these images) please feel free to send them to Catherine Barclay adminecvdi@ecvdi.eu.
EVDI Congress
Preparations for the EVDI Congress 2024 in Athens are going well.
You can find the fantastic and inspiring programme on the website https://www.evdi-congress.eu
It will again be a fantastic congress with a great scientific and social programme. The EVDI congress is our chance to meet and exchange ideas, discuss new scientific developments, greet our new diplomates and for me it is also always very important to catch up with my “radiology-friends’.
I hope many of you will attend and we can see each other and maybe dance the Sirtaki together.
There are a few updates below in this month’s newsletter.
Stay safe and hopefully we will meet at the EVDI Congress in Athens, Greece, in September.
With kind regards,
Susanne Boroffka
President, ECVDI
ECVDI Membership Fee 2024
Dear Diplomates and Associates
The 2024 annual membership fee is now due. If you haven't done so already please make the payment as soon as possible.
In order to make the payment please login to your ECVDI account on the website:
go to ‘View Profile’ - ‘My User Profile’.
there will be a “Pay Fees” button in your personal area
follow instructions to make the payment
The fees have remained the same for 2024:
Diplomates: £275.00
Associate members: £120.00
When you have made the payment please double check your record to ensure the payment has gone through and isn't listed as pending.
If you have any issues making the payment or require an invoice to make a bank transfer please contact Catherine Barclay at adminecvdi@ecvdi.eu.
If paying via bank transfer please ensure you use the invoice number or your name as a reference so we can reconcile the payment and update records accordingly.
Several reminders have been sent, but please note a late payment fee of £50 will be applied to your account from 1 August onwards.
While you are logged into your account, could you please take a moment to review and update your profile details where necessary.
Kind regards
ECVDI
Media Committee
Thank you to those of you who completed the website survey sent out by the Media Committee. The results from the survey can be found at: https://www.ecvdi.org/news/website-survey-results-2024
Coming soon and back by popular demand are the interviews with Diplomates. The first new interview will be with Petra Agthe.
Welfare Committee
The recently formed ECVDI Welfare Committee has started up its work to support the wellbeing of diplomates and residents alike. Current and planned future activities include RIVDI stress management sessions for residents, collation of wellbeing resources for for ECVDI members, peer group meetings, and liaising with other ECVDI committees and European veterinary colleges to share ideas and look for opportunities to collaborate. We are very keen to get input from all ECVDI members, and if you have any ideas, suggestions or concerns relating to welfare please send and email to petra.agthe@gmail.com.
We would also like to share a free online compassion course which has been recently made available by the University of Surrey (Link to course) The course has been designed for busy veterinary professionals so that it requires little time commitment, and it has been shown to improve the wellbeing of participants in previous studies. The course is a series of 14 short videos to improve your self-compassion skills.
Study on Radiology Reporting
Dear Colleagues,
John Mattoon and I are hoping – with your assistance – to do a study of veterinary radiology reporting. Although there is a great deal of information published about how to report radiographs (and other imaging studies), it is almost entirely medical, not veterinary, and it is unclear if practices common to medical imaging are also followed in our world. A study of reporting would provide new information about our primary activity as clinical imagers, and it seems timely to do this with the ACVR and ECVDI Consensus Statement on Imaging Reporting currently in prep.
Our proposed study has 2 aims:
- To provide a snapshot of reporting styles used by veterinary radiologists, primarily by subjective analysis of aspects including priority of findings, terminology, conciseness, redundancy, and actionable conclusions.
- To assess accuracy of reports by John and myself (both ex-ACVR Examiners) scoring reports using the ACVR Certifying Exam marking scheme that you may be familiar with.
To do this, we are asking for volunteers to report a series of 8 canine or feline thoracic and/or abdominal radiographic cases and to upload their reports anonymously for us to review.
- Cases are drawn from routine clinical activity (not exam material)
- We expect it would take about 1 hour to do the reports (using your usual method), so it should not require a significant time commitment on your part.
- We will preserve your anonymity by asking that you submit your reports in a Word document with a numerical file name chosen by you, and that you remove author information from the Word file before uploading it using a site that does not collect the originators’ Email addresses.
We want you to get something out if this, so we will share the results and our interpretation of the cases for your self-assessment.
If you wish to participate, please click this link: https://survey.vetmeduni.ac.at/index.php/849455?lang=en
The deadline for uploading your reports is 1st October.
Thank you for your time,
Christopher R. Lamb
VECCUS Consensus Statement on Point-Of-Care UltraSound: Call for experts
Dear colleagues,
A Consensus Statement on Veterinary Point-Of-Care UltraSound (POCUS) is being prepared (with the goal of publishing results in the scientific literature), by the VECCUS (Veterinary Emergency Critical Care UltraSound) Interest Group, under the umbrella of EVECCS (European Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society). A Steering Group composed of Søren Boysen, Angela Briganti, Simon Cook, Teresa DeFrancesco, Marc Seitz, Yu Ueda and Kris Gommeren is preparing the key statements to send to a group of veterinary POCUS experts and key opinion leaders. The Consensus Statement will focus on five domains:
- POCUS of the Pleural Space and Lung
- POCUS of the Cardiovascular System (including fluid status and responsiveness)
- POCUS of the Abdomen
- POCUS Guided Procedures
- POCUS of the Neurological and Ocular System
The VECCUS Consensus Statement Steering Group is therefore actively seeking experts that are willing to collaborate on this project. Experts will be invited to review statements, seeking consensus via the Delphi method, allowing sufficient time to answer during each round. The time commitment to complete the Delphi process is expected to take roughly a year, with several rounds of statement review, and updated details following each round, until consensus is reached or a failure to reach consensus is determined.
Further information will be provided once the composition of the expert panel for each domain has been finalized. To be considered an expert, both of the following requirements will need to be met:
- Have published scholarly activities related to POCUS (book chapters, abstracts, scientific studies, etc.) and/or lectured on POCUS.0
- Meet the definition of being a specialist in any of the following fields (Emergency and Critical Care, Anesthesiology, Internal Medicine, Cardiology or Diagnostic Imaging), or having completed a PhD or equivalent knowledge and training in the appropriate domain (please list specific training and date of completion). (Applications will be evaluated by the steering committee using a scoring rubric to rank candidates within each domain, also considering diversity and backgrounds of the applicants to achieve a balanced group of panelists)
If you are interested in applying to be an expert panelist please complete the form below and indicate which domains you would like to volunteer (you may select as many domains as you like, however experts will only be assigned to a maximum of two domains depending on the number of applications received).
Kind regards,
Kris Gommeren, dipECVECC, dipECVIM-CA Liège University, Belgium
on behalf of the POCUS Consensus Steering Group
RIVDI
RIVDI New Resident Welcome Meeting
The RIVDI Committee is delighted to announce our first online Welcome meeting for ECVDI residents and this is scheduled for Thursday 22nd August 2024 from 15:00 to 19:10 (London time).
This is an opportunity for us to introduce our RIVDI training programme to all ECVDI residents, but is specifically targeted at those who are early in their residency programme.
We will introduce ECVDI and the RIVDI training programme and what it offers, plus provide technical tips; a list of useful journals & literature; a wellbeing session; guest speaker 'What do radiologists do?'; presentations from the credentials and residents committees; finishing with questions & answers. Coffee breaks will also give an opportunity for break out rooms to enable the residents to engage with other residents participating.
Please can we ask all Programme Managers to allow their first year residents to get on board to support this event and if you have any further questions please contact the RIVDI team at rivdi@ecvdi.eu.
EVDI Congress Athens - Resident Day
We have experienced and specialist diplomates, for both large animals and small animals, who will each present an interesting and informative lecture during the morning, followed by some exciting and challenging cases for residents to practice during the afternoon. We will be running two separate small and large animal streams throughout the day.
The resident day will conclude with dinner, which will be an opportunity to liaise with the other residents, the speakers, the RIVDI committee members and to meet representatives from our generous RIVDI sponsors - Antech, Idexx and Vets Choice Radiology.
The resident day is free for ECVDI residents and we hope to see as many residents there as possible and if you have any questions or would like to contact the RIVDI team, please email us at rivdi@ecvdi.eu.
Diplomate RIVDI Sessions
RIVDI are looking for enthusiastic volunteers to offer future Diplomate RIVDI sessions, for either large or small animals, to offer sessions in 2024 and 2025. These sessions are meant to be informal case discussions for anyone interested, if you would be happy to share 3 interesting cases then please do consider it as we would really appreciate your participation and support. You could come solo or with 1 or 2 other friends/colleagues to divide the work! Please contact us at rivdi@ecvdi.eu to register your interest or for more information.
ECVDI Mock Board Practical Exam - Madrid 2024
We are delighted to announce that the ECVDI Mock Board Practical exams 2024 will be held in Madrid and full event details will be sent out shortly.
Date: 2nd & 3rd November 2024
Venue: NH Madrid Príncipe de Vergara, Madrid
Start: 8am (Madrid time) Saturday 2nd November
End: 2pm (Madrid time) Sunday 3rd November
If you have already passed the ECVDI theoretical exam then you qualify to participate in this ECVDI Mock Board Practical exam. Kindly note that we do take into account the credentials for the Mock Board, but these have to be fulfilled in order to sit the official exam in January 2025.
Dates for the Diary
2024
- 18 September 2024: Resident day in Athens, Greece
- 19-21 September 2024: EVDI Congress in Athens, Greece
- 2-3 November 2024: RIVDI Mock Board - Madrid, Spain
2025
- 28-29 January 2025: ECVDI Practical Exam, Zurich
- 30 January 2025: ECVDI Theoretical Exam - remote
- 1-2 November 2025: RIVDI Mock Board - venue TBC