Conclusion

Overall, this book’s relevance is clear in that it helps technologists and other medical professionals have a better understanding of MRI psychology and its effects, thus improving the quality of healthcare in diagnostic imaging. This improvement in healthcare may be seen in a variety of ways. This includes cost saving by decreasing the number of prematurely terminated and canceled MRI exams. For countries with socialized healthcare, the availability of advanced imaging such​​ as​​ MRIs​​ may become limited due to long waits before patients can have these exams, as seen in countries such as Canada and the U.K.45. Hence,​​ increasing the completion rate of this exam may have a positive effect on increasing efficiency and controlling national healthcare costs in addition to increasing the availability of this imaging modality for more patients.​​ In summary, the social context of this book involves increasing the quality of healthcare to MRI patients. Additionally, it has the potential to contribute to increasing the skill set of MRI technologists, thereby increasing our profession’s legitimacy.

Very little has been taught about the physiology and psychological aspects of anxiety in the MRI environment. Patient care in this environment is just as important as the science, and incorporating it into training programs signals that importance in the MRI professional community.

The interventions discussed in this book can not only be incorporated into traditional MRI training course, but can also take the form of in-house continuing education programs or self-study continuing education programs available to individual technologists. Both of these formats are viable options as continuing education training to improve efficiency as is normal practice in many medical fields and have been found to improve patient care and provide a benchmark for medical imaging professional practice143.