Walking the exhibition floor at the 2008 UK Radiological Congress it was clear that this year’s focus on education, education, education hit the right note.
The new ‘Education on the Stands’ initiative was enthusiastically supported by several CoRIPS partners to provide CPD value in the UKRC exhibition and the lecture programme.
Companies including Siemens, Toshiba, GE, Agfa and Philips branched out from their usual equipment displays, running a series of educational workshops, lectures and hands on demos. Radiographers who attended walked away with a CoR accredited CPD certificate for their portfolio.
As the exhibition doors opened on Monday morning over 160 people attended the first Siemens satellite lecture on hybrid imaging for trauma, far exceeding the 20 delegates who booked. This set a precedent for the next two days in which other companies reported a marked increase in the number of visitors to their stands than in previous years.
Training manager Brigitte Kaviani from Sheffield Teaching Hospital supports a delegation of radiographers from her department to attend UKRC every year. She explained why she thought this year’s scheme was a “major bonus.”
"The new education on the stands programme and the CPD events attached to it was the highlight this year for us,” she said.
“Radiographers from my department attended CT and MRI sessions. What is useful is that you didn’t have to pay for these sessions, you can just go for free to the exhibition centre and get very relevant CPD training with the latest equipment as you walk about the hall.”
Brigitte compared the programme at UKRC favourably to other forms of training she uses in her department. “Personally I am not as keen on online courses in comparison to classroom courses and, although we do use local CPD and training events, if you go on a course where you have a day of lectures locally that is all you get. At UKRC you get the added opportunity to network and see the latest equipment in the exhibition centre. I think it’s a really good place for radiographers to learn.”
LINK
http://www.ukrc.org.uk/
