Maximizing Radiologist Productivity: The Panopticon.

Though almost completely unheralded in radiology, one of the most prophetic explorations of workplace supervision was provided by the French historian Michel Foucault. Ostensibly a sociological history, Foucault’s masterpiece outlines a path that radiology leaders must be prepared to follow if they intend to extract full value from their workers, in particular their clinical radiologists. Foucault’s work, titledDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, traces out a trajectory that all radiology organizations will someday be compelled to follow. Foucault [1] begins his analysis with a discussion of 17th-century punishments, focusing on the scaffold and other public forms of humiliation, torture, and execution. At this time, punishment took place on a public stage and was focused on the infliction of physical discomfort and pain. Later, punishment began to evolve in a different direction, placing greater emphasis on the isolation of prisoners and moving toward noncorporeal techniques, including restrictions on liberty through confinement [2]. Perhaps the fullest expression of this more enlightened approach is solitary confinement. This transition in punishment included the introduction of the panopticon, a new form of imprisonment proposed by Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism. Born in London in 1748, Bentham