The breadth of teaching commitment in radiology departments: a national survey

The aim of this study was to investigate the teaching effort and associated resources across variously sized academic and nonacademic hospitals across the country.

A simple survey was constructed and distributed nationally to academic and nonacademic radiology departments of attending-level radiologists with residency programs. The survey queried human and financial resources used for education in the department or division in comparison with compensated human and financial resources for this effort.

Sixty institutions across the country were surveyed, with 40 surveys returned from 35 unique institutions, representing a 67% response rate. All respondents reported performing teaching duties. The average teaching in departments was 30 hours per week, including teaching a wide scope of constituents, including trainees, colleagues, and allied staff members. The majority of teaching was spent on teaching medical students, residents, and fellows as well as referring physicians at multidisciplinary rounds. The commitment of dedicated full-time equivalent staff members and funding to teaching was limited, with 45% of respondents without dedicated full-time equivalents for teaching and just over 7% of the teaching funded. Eighty percent of institutions surveyed provided some amount of weekly academic time during which many staff members carried out their teaching preparations.

Respondent radiology departments reported significant resource and manpower allocations to teaching efforts, in particular to trainees and referring physicians. However, limited compensation or incentives are allocated to this effort with regard to both human and financial resources. Compensated, allotted staff academic time may help offset the lack of dedicated educational resources to the teaching effort of radiology departments.