The Importance of Improving MRI Patient Access Safety and Reducing MRI Risk

MRI Safety is important all year round but during this MRI Safety Week the focus is on best practice and advice and raising awareness so that patients and staff are safe at all times.

Questions about the safety of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans for patients who have implants are asked all the time. Sadly, many hospitals and imaging providers don’t have policies on how to handle these patients. Worse yet, many radiologists and MRI radiographers make it into practice without ever having received enough formal training in MRI risks. The result is that many patients with implants (patients who have medical conditions that would benefit most from MRI exams) have their studies delayed or denied because the hospital doesn’t know quite how to handle them. This lack of training leads to delays in care, backlogs at MRI centers, and frustration for patients, their families, as well as radiology departments.

MRI safety knowledge is important, not only for the safety of the MRI patient, but also for the effective and efficient operation of an MRI service. The scarcity of seminars and conferences in the Gulf region in MRI safety has long forced the Gulf residents to travel abroad to attend these seminars. Now, under the leadership of the Saudi entrepreneur Rayan Azab, the Advanced MRI Safety Seminar is again spreading awareness in this field to help in the development of the medical sector in the Gulf region through his company, AZDEF. Azab aspires to continue organizing similar seminars that help spread awareness in the medical sector for the citizens of the Gulf, and save their effort and time of traveling abroad to learn the skills to assure patient safety.

Sponsored by the Dubai Health Authority, the Advanced MRI Safety Seminar is returning to Dubai, UAE, for the second year in a row. The Advanced MRI Safety Training Seminar will be delivered over three days, September 22-24, and is expected to provide attendees with CE credit approved by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA). This intensive seminar will cover a wide range of topics in MRI safety for the safe and effective management of MRI patient care.

The distinguished Emirati radiologist Dr. Usama Albastaki will open the seminar and welcome all of our attendees to their MRI safety journey of the Advanced MRI Safety Seminar.

Dr. Usama Albastaki is a Consultant Radiologist and Director of Diagnostic Imaging Department of Dubai Health Authority. He is the Head of the Radiology Department at Rashid Hospital in Dubai, and the Vice President of the Radiology Society of the Emirates (RSE).

The course will be delivered by the world-renowned certified MRI Safety Expert, Prof. Tobias Gilk, for three days of focused MRI safety learning at The H Hotel in downtown Dubai. Prof. Gilk – member of the IEC MRI safety standards committee, two-time member of the ACR MRI safety committee, and Board member and past-Chair of the ABMRS – will lead attendees on what amounts to a university-level course on MRI risk-assessment and superior MRI patient management, which will allow MRI providers to safely scan patients they may have not thought safe to scan. Despite greater patient access, Prof. Gilk will give examples of how this can be achieved with less labor dedicated to patient screening, all while improving the safety of patients and staff, as well as the MRI safety confidence of radiologists and radiographers.

Mr. Azab and Prof. Gilk have plans to take the Advanced MRI Safety Seminar to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the rest of the Gulf in the future, bringing this invaluable knowledge to the entire region.