Why do we need accreditation of nuclear medicine departments?

Abstract

Nuclear medicine is one of the most dynamic areas of medicine with continual technological innovations and developments of new radiotracers. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) defines nuclear medicine as a medical specialty that uses techniques with high cost-benefit index to obtain functional and anatomical information, constituting a tool for the detection, staging, treatment, prognosis and monitoring of patients [1]. Nuclear medicine has been an independent European medical specialty since 1988. The Section of Nuclear Medicine was created in 1990 within the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS), the entity that represents the medical specialties inside the European Union (EU) and that defines the basic principles of training in medical specialties in Europe in order to achieve a comparable level of knowledge and to allow the free movement of specialists among the member countries. The European Board of Nuclear Medicine (EBNM) was established in 1993 with the main objective of ensuring the highest possible levels of quality in the field of nuclear medicine. In 2000 the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) set up a Task Group on departmental accreditation. In 2003, the UEMS Section and the EBNM merged as the UEMS/EBNM to unify and facilitate their activities and created several committees, including the Committee for Accreditation of Nuclear Medicine Departments (CANMD). This was the EANM Task Group which transferred from the EANM. In practice, the UEMS/EBNM and the CANMD work in cooperation with the EANM. Technological innovations and advances in the field of new radiopharmaceuticals are very important for the continuous development of the nuclear medicine specialty. Any department of nuclear medicine must assure minimum quality requirements according to its available resources. Quality! Never has this word been used so frequently. In fact, in recent times there has been a significant reorganization of the concept of quality. Since 1947, the year the International Standards Organization (ISO) was created, there has been increasing emphasis on the quality of products and services. What before had been performed in a routine local way, nowadays attempts are made to globalize the process through standards and a good quality program and well-defined operating procedures, all of which, in our case, are to be applied to a department of nuclear medicine. Whether a department of nuclear medicine is public or private, it is assumed that it works correctly and assures minimum quality requirements. On this basis, one could ask: “what do I need to get an official accreditation by EANM?—why, in addition to possible certification by ISO and all the daily problems of budget cuts or concern for expenses generated by the cost of new equipment?” It is possible that many European nuclear medicine doctors have received training in concepts such as total quality, standardization, Deming circles, development of quality policies, objectives and indicators, and that they may now be applying those concepts in their daily work, in an effort to improve patient care and the quality of the services provided by their departments of nuclear medicine, in order to stand out from the other competitors and (why not) to survive in these very competitive times marked by the rampant crisis in all sectors. But it is also true that some other nuclear medicine physicians are unaware of these concepts. At CANMD we believe that the accreditation of nuclear medicine services is not the mere collection of a diploma to hang on the wall. To have this official accreditation is relevant and provides multiple benefits that outweigh any sacrifice. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging (2012) 39:1643–1645 DOI 10.1007/s00259-012-2184-y