Radiology curriculum for medical students: clinicians' perspectives

This study was conducted to establish clinicians' perspectives of a set of radiology curriculum topics for medical student teaching, which were held to be important by radiologists. A questionnaire was sent to clinicians in all specialties. Forty-six clinicians (51.1%) out of 90 returned the questionnaires. All curriculum topics were scored above an average of 4 (agree). The five highest ranking curriculum topics in order of importance were: developing a system for viewing chest radiographs (5.59), developing a system for viewing abdominal radiographs (5.56), developing a system for viewing bone and joint radiographs (5.33), distinguishing normal structures from abnormal in chest and abdominal radiographs (5.33) and identifying gross bone or joint abnormalities in skeletal radiographs (5.22). Correlative analysis between speciality groups showed surgical and medical specialities were significantly different in their responses of two learning outcomes: basic knowledge about the contrast media benefits and risks (P= 0.01) and ability to select the most appropriate and the most cost-effective methods of radiological investigations for clinical situations (P= 0.03). Acute specialities were not significantly different from the other two groups for these two learning outcomes. There was no statistically significant difference for other learning outcomes between the three speciality groups.