A patient with a mysterious illness will often seek help from a primary care physician.
In some cases, the physician is at a loss to explain the patient’s symptoms. Other times, a physician may have a suspicion of the underlying disease but may require proof before making a diagnosis.
In those instances, the primary care physician will typically refer his or her patient to a radiologist, a type of doctor who specializes in revealing the inner workings of the human body using imaging devices like X-rays, MRIs, PET scans and ultrasounds. This equipment allows a radiologist to produce detailed images of a person’s internal organs, which are used to determine whether there is anything wrong.
Radiology can detect the early warning signs of serious diseases like cancer, and it expedites the discovery of dangerous illnesses that could become fatal if found too late.
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This type of radiology, which focuses on disease screenings, is known as diagnostic radiology. Another type of radiology, known as interventional radiology, involves using precise imaging devices to guide minimally invasive procedures like biopsies.
Regardless of whether a premed student is interested in specializing in radiology, experts say all aspiring physicians can benefit from attending a med school with a strong radiology curriculum.
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Experts say a radiology rotation is especially helpful for medical students who intend to enter a specialty that is heavily reliant on radiology such as surgery. Plus, a school with high-quality introductory lessons on radiology will help students become competitive for a radiology residency program if they decide to become a radiologist.
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1. Experiential learning opportunities: Dr. Dylan Wolman, a diagnostic radiology resident at Stanford University School of Medicine, says that reading an X-ray or another type of body image is like solving a puzzle. So any radiology rotation during medical school should challenge students by requiring them to come up with their own interpretations of medical images, he says.
Wolman says medical students in a radiology rotation should not only be learning from observation by watching radiologists analyze images, but also be granted the opportunity to offer opinions. And though licensed physicians make the final call about what a body image indicates and they will be writing the official radiology reports for patients, medical students can still benefit from attempting to evaluate a body image, he says.
“When students are just watching, it’s very hard to feel involved,” he says. “It’s very hard to feel like you’re understanding much, and to me the fun of radiology is that it’s kind of a treasure hunt. You get to look through a study and you have to know the anatomy, you have to know what normal and abnormal looks like, and you have to be able to decide based on those pictures what the diagnosis is,” Wolman says. “And if you’re not asked to do that, even if you fail at it, which is fine, then you never get an understanding of the complexity and subtlety that can go into that process.”
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2. Robust anatomy courses: Experts say a strong anatomy course will not only require students to operate on cadavers to see what internal organs look like in a surgery environment, but also show students what those same organs look like in X-rays and other medical images. “Both diagnostic and interventional radiology depend highly on a solid foundational knowledge of gross anatomy, and anatomical structures appear different on medical imaging studies compared to cadavers,” Dr. Peter Haar, an assistant professor of radiology at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, said via email. “The ideal education for future radiologists incorporates imaging anatomy in parallel with gross anatomy [the branch of anatomy that focuses on how organs appear when they are exposed for visible inspection such as during a dissection], so the different appearances can be learned simultaneously.”
3. A strong residency program nearby: “My advice for aspiring radiologists is to study at a place that they would be proud to train at as residents,” Dr. Richard Heller III, the vice president of clinical services and national director of pediatric radiology at Radiology Partners, a radiology practice which operates at locations throughout the U.S., said via email. “While many medical students leave their home institution for residency training, studying someplace that you admire is a great way to start learning and building your network of radiology colleagues.”
4. Innovative radiology research: Dr. Desiree Morgan, vice chair of education and professor in the department of radiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, says that it’s ideal to attend a medical school that is conducting research into new radiology techniques, since medical students who attend a school at the cutting-edge of radiology research are likely to learn about state-of-the-art imaging methods.
5. Excellence in multiple medical school departments: Because radiologists must recognize the subtle signs of disease in various body parts, premeds who hope to become radiologists should attend a med school which has multiple excellent academic departments, says Dr. Alex Grieco, assistant professor of radiology at Ohio State University College of Medicine.
He says that a medical school which teaches radiology well will generally integrate body images into courses about every major body system such as the gastrointestinal tract. In general, experts say, a compelling medical school radiology curriculum will show how medical imaging can inform doctors’ treatment decisions.
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How to Find a Medical School That Excels in Radiology originally appeared on usnews.com
