A Year Like No Other

At the time of this writing, the chaos that started around March appears to have no intention of “going out like a lamb.” The COVID-19 second wave has begun across much of Europe and North America just as influenza season is approaching in the Northern Hemisphere. Cases are surging and medical systems are again being strained, despite so many of us conducting our lives and work virtually.

Even the 106th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the RSNA, our flagship, world-wide radiology conference, has gone virtual. There are clear benefits to this approach, aside from obvious safety and financial ones. There will be no cutting short the US Thanksgiving weekend with travel, no navigating the maze that is O’Hare Airport, no waiting on a freezing sidewalk for the shuttle bus, and no wandering the exhibit halls until your feet cry out for mercy.

But there are substantial downsides. There will be no running into a long-lost friend on the bridge, no striking up a conversation with a stranger — someone about to become a new friend — while waiting for the shuttle bus, no networking, and no socializing in those stunning exhibit halls. It is so much more difficult to make those vital personal connections virtually.

Yes, the science can be learned and the lectures attended, but the experience is diminished. Surely the organizers are doing their level best to make the experience as intellectually and socially rewarding as possible, but as the old saying goes, “there’s nothing like being there.”

It seems to me best summed up by this haiku making the rounds on social media, attributed to a Cheri Schultz:

We isolate now

So when we gather again

No one is missing.

Please Welcome our New Board Member

At Applied Radiology, we value our entire radiology community. We know that our technologists, working out there on the front lines – not remotely or in “alternative work arrangements” — are the irreplaceable backbone of our specialty and, very often, the face of radiology for our patients. As such, they should be represented on our Editorial Advisory Board. Please join me in welcoming Christine Harris, RT(R)(MR), MRSO, to our Enterprise Imaging section. Ms Harris is the MR Operational Manager at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, and she brings a wealth of experience and a novel perspective to our board. Together, we look forward to engaging more fully with our technologist partners in the years to come.

I wish you and yours the happiest and healthiest of New Years. Be well, until we can be together again.