"Carol S. Marcus" wrote:
Dear Mr. Lipton:You need to learn to make a distinction between board certified physicians in Nuclear Medicine, as opposed to other groups of physicians who have little education or training in Nuclear Medicine, but who manage to buy licenses to practice some or all of it because NRC is desperate for the money from the User Fees. The United States has the lowest requirements for practicing Nuclear Medicine among first world countries, and has lower requirements than many third world countries as well, such as India. I think that you will find that the poor quality professional behavior "discovered" by the NRC is not occurring to any extent, or certainly any significant extent, among the board certified Nuclear Medicine physicians, but among others with lesser qualifications. This is certainly the case with NRC's "misadministrations", nearly all of which occurred in practices of non-board certified Nuclear Medicine physicians. The few that occurred with board-certified Nuclear Medicine physicians were almost invariably caused by techs who disobeyed procedures put in place by the physicians. The real lesson is that NRC is inflicting poor quality Nuclear Medicine on members of the public because (1) NRC needs the money and (2) NRC advertises medical shortcomings and errors perpetrated by such poorly educated and trained individuals as evidence for the need of its regulation of the field, fooling naive members of the public, Congress, and apparently you as well. One could easily look at NRC's "discoveries" and come to quite another conclusion, namely, that NRC has caused a problem by selling licenses to poorly qualified individuals, and that it should proceed to require the education, training, and experience of physicians for its own licensing that the American Board of Nuclear Medicine requires for its Diplomates. That is what NRC has done with Radiation Oncology. Why not Nuclear Medicine?
That would solve most of NRC's "problems", but the drop in User Fee income would cause NRC to have to unbudget many of its staff and management, all of whom are completely incompetent in Nuclear Medicine, or any kind of medicine, and Nuclear Pharmacy, or any kind of pharmacy, not to mention its pathetic competence in medical physics and mathematics.
When the National Academy of Sciences-Institute of Medicine studied NRC's "medical" program, the NAS-IOM found that it was so dysfunctional and without value that it recommended that Congress remove NRC's statutory authority in all medical and medical research areas. Way to go, guys...............
If you need a Nuclear Medicine procedure, what do you look for? A physician board certified in Nuclear Medicine, or any old physician who has bought a license to practice it from a greedy, medically incompetent regulator?
Ciao,
Carol S. Marcus, Ph.D., M.D., ABNM, FACNP
<csmarcus@ucla.edu>
Dear Dr. Marcus,
Many thanx for supporting my opinion that medical licensees need to improve their self -regulation. It seems, however, that you are confusing the practice of nuclear medicine with the practice of health physics. A hospital RSO's responsibilities are quite different from those of a nuclear medicine physician, even though they could be the same individual. I find it difficult to understand how a hospital RSO, even if board certified in nuclear medicine, could fulfill his responsibilities if he's not even aware that he's the RSO.
The opinions expressed are strictly mine.
It's not about dose, it's about trust.
Curies forever.
Bill Lipton, Sc.D., CHP, CHMM, MBA
liptonw@dteenergy.com