Notes of a Radiology Watcher

Book excerpt: The Radiology Department is a pivotal part of any acute and/or comprehensive health care facility. The radiologist can no longer just “hide out” there. Matters of imaging are often public concerns, larger in scope than just the scheduling and managing of a series of image tests. Rather radiology is expensive, often intrusive and in some areas earnestly and endlessly controversial. A radiologist must be attuned to these often confounding contingencies. Two recent developments in the monitoring of education of radiologists can be impacted by the content of this book. For trainees in Radiology, and for that matter, for all trainees in every medical specialty in the U.S., a new accreditation system (NAS) has been put into place under the impetus and aegis of the ACGME, the Accreditation Committee for Graduate Medical Education, the body responsible for graduate medical evaluation and oversight in the U.S. Among its many innovations, the NAS curriculum is concerned with knowledge acquired about social and economic issues pertinent to each specialty. It is also focused on improving communication skills and about enhancing quality and safety. In the elaboration of “milestones” for residency education in these issues are codified into focused initiatives that must be addressed by each trainee as he or she advances in capability and seniority within the training interval.