5-day 'bootcamp' significantly improves med students' radiology knowledge
Medical students stand to benefit significantly from a short radiology “bootcamp” course prior to entering residency.
Feeling unprepared to begin training is common among many medical students, and no specialty is immune. Radiology knowledge is beneficial to all medical residents, not just those pursuing it as a specialty, but many have reported feeling uninformed about the field and how it relates to their own career path.
“Medical students have experienced incremental exposure to radiology over the last two decades; however, this is often limited to teaching during anatomy courses and nonradiology clinical clerkships,” Abdul M. Zafar, MD, an assistant professor of radiology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and colleagues wrote in a new paper in Academic Radiology. “Appropriate exposure to radiology can be impactful early in residency as interns and junior residents are frequently required to order and partially interpret imaging studies independently during call and in emergencies.”
The team proposed that a short educational bootcamp on the basics of radiology could improve students’ preparedness prior to going into their internships. They developed a five-day program that was offered as a virtual elective for students in their final year of medical school following the national residency match. Curriculum focused on tasks that interns were likely to be assigned early on in residency, including requesting diagnostic studies, counseling patients, assessing eligibility for a particular examination, and screening imaging for critical findings that would require urgent escalation to senior colleagues.
Students completed questionnaires before and after participating in the course to determine how its contents affected their knowledge of basic radiology practices, as well as their confidence in completing imaging-related tasks. Changes in the assessments suggested that the bootcamp was both well-received and effective. Students’ knowledge of radiology improved significantly, particularly for patient communication and appropriate exam selection. Students’ confidence pertaining to noninterpretive skills improved significantly as well.
“Our findings demonstrate that a short, structured, well-timed radiology elective can be an effective method to improve both perceived and objective residency preparedness,” the authors noted. “With medical schools increasingly struggling to deliver content within the brevity of their educational years, a radiology bootcamp may offer a feasible and high-impact model for improving internship preparedness, especially if positioned just prior to its commencement.”
The course was rated at a 4.8 out of 5, and 100% of the participants indicated they would recommend it to a fellow student. It was so effective, in fact, that it will now be offered to fourth year medical students every spring semester.
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In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.