March 13, 2000
From the desk of the MRS RFS President:
Since the Section was formally created in March 1999 at the Massachusetts Radiological Society annual meeting, it has been an exciting year. We have been continuing the successful biannual forums in addition to planning this website, which is a work in progress. We are also planning ways to increase membership.

The spring forum, "Strategies for Passing the Boards," and the fall forum, "Business Aspects of Radiology," were well received. This spring we plan to focus on a past topic which was very popular: Applying for Fellowships. It also happens to be a very pertinent topic given the recent national discussion regarding reorganization of the fellowship application process. Last September, Emily Sedgwick and I joined over 100 other residents from across the country in attending the American College of Radiology's national meeting. A resident-sponsored proposal for resident involvement in assessing the current fellowship application process and creation an alternative method was accepted. Apparently, the evaluation of the fellowship application process was already underway with plans for possibly instituting a Match in 2002, though there had been no resident input. If we would like to have a say in how we will apply for fellowships in the future, we need to discuss our ideas and work with other state chapters over this next year. I hope this year's spring forum will not only be informative but will also be a springboard for discussion.

In addition, this year we have been working on — and will continue to work on — this website (which is a subsite of the MRS site). Our RFS Secretary, Christoph Wald (cwald@csi.com), has been very active in organizing this. I believe this will be an important method of communication for the R&F Section, which is comprised of residents across the state in different training programs with different schedules and limited free time. One idea for the fall forum has been to focus on Radiology and the Internet. During this time we could introduce the website to those who have not heard of it yet. This spring we plan to introduce the Resident & Fellow Section to the incoming residents and have had ideas for both social and educational events.

The Resident & Fellow Section is a dynamic group which focuses on the interests and concerns of members in the Massachusetts training programs. Members of the training programs are welcome to join for free. You can help shape the Section and can put as much, or as little, time as you want into accomplishing the goals that we set together.

Mark Hansberry, MD
mthansberry@hotmail.com