Analysis of Spanish vocational radiographers' education through clinical training and perceptions of core subject teachers: A survey.

Introduction: This work presents a prospective analysis of the key aspects involved in the Spanish radiographer's perception of the weaknesses of the current educational curriculum in terms of teaching staff's qualifications and composition in the clinical training and core subjects. The goal is to show clinical training and professional's perception of the teaching quality and to characterise the weakness detected within the context of the European radiographer's academic system.

Methods: The perception of the quality of the training received by the professionals was collected through an anonymous survey. A total of 758 valid responses were received, and were analysed to three hypotheses: the variability of the teachers' qualifications in the core subjects, the variability in terms of internships time carried out by the students, and assessment about teaching quality of the teachers.

Results: The results prove there is a huge variability and little academic affinity of the teachers' degrees with the core subjects. On the other hand, the results shows there is a scarcity of clinical training hours in Spain, especially compared to European standards. It was demonstrated that teachers with a specific radiographer degree obtained the best scores.

Conclusion: It is mandatory to adjust the criteria for selecting clinical imaging teachers to improve the teaching quality in Spain and increase the clinical training period of the Spanish radiographers to match their European counterparts.

Implication For Practice: Improving the training of Spanish radiographers will contribute to standardising the training quality of the whole European profession.