Student and Educator Experiences of an Integrated Medical Imaging Curriculum

Medical imaging is integrated across all years in the medical programs at the Medical School, in our country. Little is known about this pedagogical approach from the perspective of those who participate in it. This study investigated how students and educators experience an integrated medical imaging curriculum.

One-on-one interviews were conducted with nine educators and three undergraduate medical students and analyzed using a reflexive thematic approach. Educators included radiologists, non-radiologists clinicians, and scientists and health professionals from the medical program.

The integrated medical imaging curriculum appears to be incoherently experienced by educators and students as learning opportunities that were 'everywhere and nowhere'. Teaching events were 'repetitive and patchy' and featured a transmission-oriented pedagogy emphasizing 'exposure and absorption'. Educators expressed paradoxical views of their responsibility for teaching medical imaging reflected in this sentiment: 'I don't teach medical imaging… (but I do)'.

When medical imaging is integrated into learning resources and course work across the undergraduate program, it may lose its visibility and importance as a distinct learning area despite its crucial role in medical practice. An integrated curriculum may inadvertently separate knowing about medical imaging from learning to apply medical imaging knowledge in clinical practice.

Further work is required to construct an integrated medical imaging curriculum that explicitly emphasizes medical imaging learning outcomes, so they are experienced coherently and consistently by medical students and those who prepare them for practice as doctors.