Developing a Job Description for a Vice Chair of Education in Radiology: The ADVICER Template.

Rationale And Objectives: The newly formed Alliance of Directors and Vice Chairs of Education in Radiology (ADVICER), a group within the Alliance for Clinician Educators in Radiology, identified an acute need for a generic job description template for Vice Chairs of Education in Radiology, a role that is being developed in many academic Departments of Radiology. Eighty-three percent of current members who responded to a survey had no detailed job description, and over half had no job description at all. Having a comprehensive and detailed job description is vital to developing this key position.

Manual vs automated lateral rotation to reduce preventable pulmonary complications in ventilator patients.

Purpose: To estimate effect sizes for a trial to compare preventable pulmonary complications (PPCs), turning-related adverse events, mechanical ventilation duration, intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay, and ICU mortality between patients randomized to 2-hourly manual or continuous automated lateral rotation.

Methods: Randomized controlled trial pilot study with 15 patients selected randomly from eligible medical-surgical ICU patients from 2 tertiary hospitals and assigned randomly to the manual-turn or automated-turn protocol for up to 7 consecutive days. A radiologist blinded to group and site assessed serial chest radiographs for PPCs.

The next accreditation system in radiology: a report from the APDR residency structure committee.

In a move to emphasize the educational outcomes of training programs, the ACGME has created the Next Accreditation System (NAS). The stated goals of NAS include aiding the ACGME in the accreditation of programs based on educational outcome measures, decreasing program burdens associated with the conventional process-based approach to ACGME accreditation, allowing good programs to innovate while enabling struggling programs to steadily improve, and providing public accountability for outcomes. Diagnostic radiology is among the first group of specialties to undergo NAS implementation and began operating under the NAS in July 2013.

Resident education in the radiological sciences: what now?

Objective: With the dizzying changes in the rapidly evolving profession of radiology, the structure of resident education in the associated sciences of imaging, physics, radiobiology, and radiation effects must be reevaluated continually. What roles do these basic radiologic sciences play in bolstering the neophyte radiologist on a career of patient care? How should we define the spectrum of material that should be learned? How should that spectrum be taught? Who decides these things? With the impending changes in the radiology board certification process, questions have been raised as to how these changes will affect education in a residency program. Should the basic science curriculum be enhanced or scaled back? With the emphasis on practical applied physics, what is considered old school and what is new school material?

Conclusion: This article describes one approach adopted by a large residency program to address these issues.

CTPA as the gold standard for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.

Purpose: The estimated annual incidence of pulmonary embolism (PE) is between 69 to 205 cases per 100,000 persons-years. New imaging studies have been developed during the past decade. Chest CTPA, especially multidetector CT, has proven to be superior or equal to PA angiography, even detecting smaller filling defects.

Classic imaging signs of congenital cardiovascular abnormalities.

Cardiovascular imaging is a rapidly evolving field that requires familiarity with the appearances of pediatric and adult cardiovascular diseases on chest radiographs as well as images obtained with computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and angiography. To accurately identify congenital abnormalities affecting the heart and vessels of the thorax, radiologists must recognize the imaging features and understand their pathophysiologic origin. The cardiovascular imaging signs of congenital anomalies that are most often seen in radiologic practice include the egg on a string (seen in transposition of the great arteries), snowman (total anomalous pulmonary venous return), scimitar (partial anomalous pulmonary venous return), gooseneck (endocardial cushion defect), figure of three and reverse figure of three (aortic coarctation), boot-shaped heart (tetralogy of Fallot), and box-shaped heart (Ebstein anomaly).

Lines and stripes: where did they go?--From conventional radiography to CT.

Frontal and lateral radiography has traditionally been used to evaluate the chest, although computed tomography (CT) and high-resolution CT are increasingly being used as an adjunct to conventional radiography for the evaluation of parenchymal and mediastinal disease. Nevertheless, radiography remains a very important modality in this context, and use of chest radiography alone can provide a vast amount of useful information. This information is derived from the configurations and interrelationships of the anatomic structures in the lung, mediastinum, and pleura and forms the basis of the "lines and stripes" concept, which plays a valuable role in establishing a diagnosis before proceeding to CT.

ICU chest radiographs - ICU calamities: evaluation of the portable chest radiograph.

Familiarity with anatomy and anatomic variants, with tubes and catheters and their correct positioning, as well as complications of these positionings, is critical for the radiologist interpreting plain film radiographs taken in the intensive care unit.