Expanding our concept of simulation in radiology: a "Radiology Requesting" session for undergraduate medical students

Whilst radiology is central to the modern practice of medicine, graduating doctors often feel unprepared for radiology in practice. Traditional radiological education focuses on image interpretation. Key areas which are undertaught include communication skills relating to the radiology department. We sought to design teaching to fill this important gap.

We developed a small group session using in situ simulation to enable final and penultimate year medical students to develop radiology-related communication and reasoning skills. Students were given realistic cases, and then challenged to gather further information and decide on appropriate radiology before having the opportunity to call a consultant radiologist on a hospital phone and simulate requesting the appropriate imaging with high fidelity. We evaluated the impact of the teaching through before-and-after Likert scales asking students about their confidence with various aspects of requesting imaging, and qualitatively through open-ended short answer questionnaires.

The session was delivered to 99 students over 24 sessions. Self-reported confidence in discussing imaging increased from an average of 1.7/5 to 3.4/5 as a result of the teaching (p < 0.001) and students perceived that they had developed key skills in identifying and communicating relevant information.

The success of this innovative session suggests that it could form a key part of future undergraduate radiology education, and that the method could be applied in other areas to broaden the application of simulation.

This study highlights a gap in undergraduate medical education. It describes and demonstrates the effectiveness of an intervention to fill this gap.