CAYHILL-Over a year ago, the St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) commenced a bilateral education program with the Rijnland Hospital in the Netherlands for its Radiology Technicians. Now, the technicians are prepared to begin the final stage of this program, projected for completion in 2015.
For a total of four weeks in October and November 2013, radiology technicians from the Rijnland Hospital gave on the job training to SMMC radiology technicians in the area of CT scan, mammography and bucky imaging. The training was to improve imaging at the radiology department, with the use of new and revised protocols.
The second phase of the bilateral education program was a theory examination which assessed the SMMC radiology technicians’ pre-existing knowledge of radiology imaging and what they would have learnt during the educational upgrade. The technicians passed this examination in April 2014.
The examination was set by Radiologist Dr. Herman Schuttevaer, from the Rijnland Hospital, who specializes in intervention radiology and mammography. He presented the certificates to the radiology technicians upon his return to the SMMC in February of this year. Dr. Schuttevaer first came to the SMMC as a visiting specialist, during that time he saw the possibility to improve the knowledge and skills of the radiology staff and has since then been instrumental in that regard.
The third and upcoming phase of the program is the education exchange visit; where the SMMC radiology technicians will do an internship at Rijnland for additional training over a period of three to four weeks.
At Rijnland, the technicians will have the opportunity to expand their learning in areas of MRI and intervention radiology. Most importantly however, is the objective to maintain the knowledge they have gain throughout the program.
The staff is enthusiastic about their continued education as are the program coordinators, “The St. Maarten Medical Center is continuing to investing in future learning and assessment of its employees, this is important to improve and maintain the quality of care provided,” says Dr. Schuttevaer.
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In Photo: Radiology technicians Gavin Cossiah, Candy Gravenbeek-Kaise and Johan Sabajo.