UEMS/EBNM endeavour

Excerpt

Nuclear medicine has been a recognized medical specialty for many years. In Europe it was first recognized in 1988. In 1989, together with Michel de Roo, Desmond Croft achieved “formal recognition” of nuclear medicine as a separate medical specialty within the Union Européenne des Médecins Spécialistes/European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS). The Section of Nuclear Medicine appeared in 1990 within the UEMS, and the European Board of Nuclear Medicine (EBNM) was created in 1993. Its main objective, according to Article 2 of the Statutes, is “to ensure the highest standards in the field of nuclear medicine …” [1]. Later in 2003 the UEMS Section of Nuclear Medicine and the EBNM merged “in order to unify and facilitate activities, mainly to improve and harmonize the training of nuclear medicine throughout European countries to the highest possible standards”, as stated in Article 1 of the Statutes [1]. The Educational and Syllabus Committee, after a careful and detailed consideration of all the changes pertinent to the state-of-the-art practice of nuclear medicine as an independent specialty, organized a well-structured document containing the up-to-date level of training required for anybody to be able to practice diagnostic and therapeutic (outpatient and inpatient) nuclear medicine. There is a need to settle the “ideal” training, including qualitative and quantitative components, in order to avoid what Hundeshagen said in a personal communication in the second half of the last century “The years after 1947 left it to the initiative of individuals, whose chiefs either tolerated—or in some cases even encouraged—them in dealing with the problems of radioisotope applications. As everywhere, nothing was available. There was but sparse information, since at that time almost no specialty journals were accessible.” This and other interesting descriptions of events that led to the establishment of nuclear medicine as an independent medical specialty can be read in the History of Nuclear Medicine in Europe by Feld and de Roo [2]. …