Celebrating A Year of MR Safety!

Today, March 16, 2021, marks one full year since our last MR safety event. This is a noteworthy accomplishment of which we can all be proud, and it is a reflection of the hard work of our colleagues and friends on the MR Safety Committee.

In the first decades of clinical MR imaging, scanners were isolated and rare enough to make concerns about MR safety seem theoretical and abstract. But as these powerful machines became an essential and ubiquitous part of our clinical diagnostic toolbox, their potential dangers became a reality. We have successfully pivoted from having a reactive and scattershot response to safety incidents to a proactive and structured approach, one that allows us to recognize policy violations and minor incidents before they build up into safety events. We don’t pretend to think that safety concerns will ever go away, but we continue to work to ensure that we can address them prior to the point where they may cause harm.

I personally would like to thank the MR technologists and the Anesthesiology nurses and staff for creating and maintaining an environment dedicated to safety. We would not have achieved this milestone without their unwavering commitment to safety. Special thanks to Julie Young, Tony Dandino, Julie Dickerson, Rachel Smith, Mona Valentine, Sam Brady, and all the members of the MR Safety Committee for their leadership, hard work, and unfailing optimism in addressing these often frustrating problems and bringing us to this happy anniversary. Finally, thank you to the entire department for committing to creating a safe and open working environment for us all.

Dr. Blaise Jones, author; Glenn Miñano, BFA, editor; Meredith Towbin, copy editor