Cost to the hospital of a clinical training program

Programs for the training of radiologic technologists involving clinical training at a host hospital are growing rapidly. The objective of the study reported in this paper was to determine the cost to the hospital of supporting such clinical training. Information was collected by means of interviews with hospital administrative officials, clinical instructors and current and recent students. The thrust of the inquiry was toward hospital activities in the production of patient radiologic services. Specifically, questions dealt with the diversion of professional care from the hospital workload and the substitutability of student effort in the performance of professional duties associated with the implementation of the clinical training program. It appears that hosting a clinical training program does not increase hospital costs. There may in fact be a net benefit to the hospital. There was widespread agreement that the production of a student-instructor team more than offset the loss of output resulting from the diversion of staff personnel to instructional duties. Other costs--capital, supplies, breakage--do not appear to be major, and are possibly offset by benefits such as improved recruitment of technologists.