Computerized data base of teaching conference cases

Conferences consisting of case presentation with discussion are a major tool in radiology resident teaching. We used a computerized data base to study the case mix at our teaching conference. At daily conferences from July 1984 to March 1985 each case was recorded as to patient name, identification number, date, type of conference, case presented, modality used, organ study, and diagnosis. Data were entered on a 256K IBM PC with two 360K disk drives running dBase II (Ashton-Tate). Use of a computer to store the information offered the advantage of rapid analysis of the data by type of study or region of interest. Initial use of the system has confirmed its utility in the areas of teaching file generation, monitoring of conference content, and as an aid in modifying the case content to represent more evenly the spectrum of disease found in a given organ or an organ system.