Improving Radiologist-IT Staff Communications and Collaboration Through a Shadowing Project

It is important for radiology practices to have efficient and skillful IT staff to provide support for issues that arise during patient care. However, an anecdotal barrier exists between radiologists and IT staff that can hinder the delivery of this care, either by lengthening the time required to solve problems with the IT infrastructure or not bringing critical issues to the IT staff's attention. We first created a survey of the radiologists and IT staff in our department to investigate this barrier, and found that there was, at baseline, a significant difference in how one group viewed the other, and, at times, there were irrational expectations from either party of what their counterparts were responsible for or capable of. We then instituted a shadowing project, whereby radiologists shadowed IT staff and vice versa, in order to give each group a better understanding of the others' daily workflows. We gave the participants a post-intervention survey to assess their experiences, which were markedly positive. In one case, an IT issue regarding pre-fetching of cardiovascular studies was, in fact, solved during the shadowing session.