To assess program director's reactions to a Residency Review Committee rule change requiring diagnostic radiology residents to complete 12 months of training prior to taking independent call, 303 Association of Program Directors members were surveyed. A total of 147 members responded (48.5% response rate). Overall, 66.1% of respondents were opposed to the change, 21.1% were in favor of it, and ...

This paper describes how to use Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) analysis to evaluate radiologists’ performance of interpreting digital mammograms in real-time. We developed an experimental testing system, which implemented a set of clinical lesion-matching rules to prepare raw ROC data. The system can automatically provide detailed evaluations of the performance, such as sensitivity, spe...

Changes to the ABR certification process are imminent, with a core examination after 36 months of training and a certifying examination 15 months after the completion of training replacing the current examination structure for residents entering training in July 2010 and beyond. The Residency Restructuring Committee of the Association of Program Directors in Radiology was developed to analyze t...

Over the last few decades, there has been a rise in the number of minimally invasive techniques, such as arthroscopy, vascular radiology and our speciality, laparoscopy. Laparoscopy has resulted in a reduction in the damage caused during intervention, with the subsequent reduction in hospital stay, postoperative pain and infections. However, one disadvantage of these techniques is that they req...

BACKGROUND Demographic changes are leading to an ageing population in Europe, and predict an increase in the number of nursing home residents over the next 30 years. Nursing home residents need specialised healthcare services such as radiology due to both chronic and acute illnesses. Mobile radiography, x-ray examinations performed in the nursing homes, may be a good way of providing services t...

Residency Training Requirements: For Better or Worse? A proposal has recently been put forward to increase the duration of the nuclear medicine residency and implement a 3-tier residency training requirement beginning in 2005 or 2006. The proposal includes increasing the length of the nuclear medicine residency from 3 to 4 years (1 basic clinical year [PGY-1] plus 3 years of nuclear medicine) f...

BACKGROUND Residents are one of the key stakeholders of specialty training. The Turkish Board of Family Medicine wanted to pursue a realistic and structured approach in the design of the specialty training programme. This approach required the development of a needs-based core curriculum built on evidence obtained from residents about their needs for specialty training and their needs in the cu...