Medical Imaging Review

Radiology and Web 2.0: Inside the World of Radblogging

By Cat Vasko

When Sumer Sethi, MD, started his radiology site in 2004, the word blog was still a relatively recent invention, a shortening of the more formal term weblog. “In different fields, people had started to use weblogs as platforms for communicating with readers without the need for an expensive platform or publishing house,” Sethi (editor-in-chief of the Internet Journal of Radiology) says. “I thought, ‘A blog can be my platform to share my radiology cases and ideas online,’ and that got me started.”

Samir_Shah Today, Sumer’s Radiology Site (sumerdoc.blogspot.com) is one of the Web’s most popular radiology blogs; Sethi adds a case to the site almost daily. Meanwhile, “radblogging,” as it has been nicknamed by Sethi and others, is a growing trend. Samir Shah, a radiologist with Virtual Radiologic (vRad), is a radblogger of a different, but increasingly common, stripe; along with colleagues, he contributes to the nationwide practice’s blog (blog.vrad.com). “We thought it was a good way for our radiologists to get their voices heard,” Shah says. “We can communicate a lot of ideas in a rapid fashion.”

>> Read More

Changing Radiology Landscape Warrants New Residency Curriculum

By Julie Ritzer Ross

jonathan_medverd Radiology has come a long way in terms of education in business practices and health-care policy, with residency-training requirements in competencies related to these subjects in place for more than a decade. Further commitment to and innovation within these curricula are warranted, however.

That is the conclusion of a study1 led by Jonathan Medverd, MD, of the University of Washington. “Physicians come out of fellowship training knowing how to diagnose and treat pneumonia—as simple an example as that is—but when it comes to practice management, they have a much weaker foundation,” Medverd says. “From the study, it is clear that the importance of these topics is definitely well perceived. Development, though, is not where it should be.”

>> Read More

Portrait of a Young Radiologist: Stephen Chang, MD

By Cat Vasko

Stephen Chang, MD, discovered his interest in health policy as part of an educational program initiated not by radiology mentors, but by radiology residents. Today, Chang, who is completing his fellowship training in breast and body oncology imaging, is an ACR® Moorefield Economics and Health Policy fellow, but as a resident at Columbia University, he found his education in these areas lacking. “We were able to invite speakers with an interest or expertise in those areas, but in general, many residents don’t get a lot of exposure to coding or reimbursement issues,” he says.

stephen_chang Chang’s recent experiences in residency and fellowship training mirror those of emerging radiologists nationwide, who are in the unique position of finishing their education in a field that was quite different when they selected their area of specialization. For example, Chang says, “There are a lot of radiologist partners in practice who would have retired by now, but with the economic downturn, their retirement funds were cut in half. Now, they are staying on in their positions, and there are economic factors driving them to take on more work to maintain the same level of income, instead of hiring more people.”