Radiology resident educationCorrelation Among On-Call Resident Study Volume, Discrepancy Rate, and Turnaround Time
Section snippets
Materials and methods
At our institution, emergency department inpatient and outpatient diagnostic studies initiated between 8:01 AM and 4 PM are interpreted by “day-shift” staff radiologists and residents. A “short-call” attending and resident are responsible for emergency department and critical inpatient computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound (US) studies initiated between 4:01 PM and 9 PM. A “night-float” resident arrives at 9 PM and interprets emergent CT and US studies between 9:01 PM and 11 PM with the
Results
A total of 1133 CT and US studies between January 1, 2008, and June 30, 2008, were retrospectively reviewed. Sixty-one night-float shifts were analyzed with a nearly even distribution of the six second-year radiology residents in the call pool. The average number of studies encountered per shift was 18.61 (standard deviation ± 7.49) though the spectrum ranged from 7 to 40 studies per shift.
The average interpretation time was 28.46 minutes (standard deviation ± 9.20) though the spectrum ranged
Discussion
Resident education and autonomy have to be weighed conscientiously with patient care and throughput of other clinical services in mind. Many prior studies have shown low radiology resident discrepancy rates without a negative impact on patient care 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. To fully assess whether resident coverage is meeting the needs of the emergency department during after-hours shifts, a more thorough investigation involving interpretation times and correlation statistics is necessary. To
References (11)
- et al.
The effect of international teleradiology attending radiologist coverage on radiology residents' perceptions of night call
J Am Coll Radiol
(2006) - et al.
Discrepancies in interpretation of ED body computed tomographic scans by radiology residents
Am J Emerg Med
(2007) - et al.
Effects of training and experience in the interpretation of emergency body CT scans
Radiology
(1996) - et al.
Preliminary radiology resident interpretations versus final attending radiologist interpretations and the impact on patient care in a community hospital
Am J Roentgenol AJR
(2007) - et al.
Head trauma: CT scan interpretation by radiology residents versus staff radiologists
Radiology
(1998)
Cited by (0)
Conflict of interest: None.