2026 ASRT HOD Meeting

I had the privilege of serving as a delegate alongside Matt McLinden (former OSRT president) at the ASRT House of Delegates Meeting this June in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We were joined by Oregon's two Student to Leadership Development Participants Kyndra and Emily who were able to sit with us on the house floor during the two House of Delegates meetings. It was a long weekend of networking with neighboring societies (hello Washington, Idaho, and California!) and addressing national radiologic technologist issues.

Highlights from the House of Delegates:

The creation of an Imaging Assistant membership category (95$ fee) with voting privileges to the ASRT. They cannot serve as delegates or hold office but it does allow them the path to create their own chapter for representation. The ARRT is set to begin registry exams later this year for this new credential. Limited practice imaging personnel have the rights and obligation of Active Members except to hold office. It is the position of the ASRT that contrast administration may be supervised on-site or virtually as long as there are at least two people in the scan room

While these changes reflect ASRT's positions, state affiliates are allowed to create their own rules within their societies about membership categories. There is also a new initiative to share Radiologic Technology as a career field through classroom visits, community fairs, and field trips via the "ASRT Planting Seeds" program. This aligns well with the OSRT's mission to Advocate, Educate, and Inform and aligns with current goals to add preschool lesson plans to our digital member resources and to continue the celebration of mammography events throughout October.

This national ASRT meeting also has chapter meetings for all attendees to sit and attend. Multiple chapter meetings occur at the same time, but we are able to present updates from a few of the chapters:

Radiography Chapter: Matt reported from the radiography chapter that AI is as big of a topic nationally as it has been at our annual meetings, and that fostering positive workplace cultures amid burnout for students has been a challenge.

Mammography Chapter: We discussed the recently distributed practice survey. It showed some mammographers tend to do the job duties of multiple faculty (film librarian, scheduler, etc.) with shrinking patient appointments and stagnating wages, while others are getting assistants and longer appointment times. The hope is the survey shows the standard is 15min screening appointments with support staff, weather that be film librarians or patient advocates to address the non-imaging portions of the exam. It was suggested that along with the practice survey results, mammographers could present data on skin tears or more callbacks as a result of less patient time to their management.

CT Chapter: No updates.

-- OSRT President, Taylor Balfour