[Intl_DxMedPhys] Diagnostic Resident Physics Curriculum Ideas

[Steven Shea]

Dear list,

I am reaching out to ask for examples/suggestions for how you/your program
is teaching diagnostic physics to Radiology residents. We are about to
undergo a major change at our institution for physics teaching.
Previously,  we have had 1.5 hour physics lectures roughly once per week
and we covered the entire AAPM curriculum
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.aapm.org/education/ERG/DIARAD/__;!!KGKeukY!z8uXyekquwm4BAonS3FkIjfzHGiWDON3FSsrNiy9Ymd8Db_fZL5FDilUrF-q6DcoE4WyAFGY7j_rThzp1-I1pd4WbhyBQGUS_7DinpmnewCHbP0t$ > each year. The idea was to
expose the residents multiple times to physics conferences (as concepts
were abstract and not as emphasized in their clinical work) and also to
ensure all residents saw the lectures at least twice before their third
year board exams. (Residents would sometimes miss lectures due to call
schedule or rotations away from campus.) The new proposal from our program
director would significantly reduce the physics lectures (maybe once per
month in the normal conference schedule) and we are looking into other
options/alternatives. Part of the justification was that several other
local programs were not devoting this amount of time to physics lectures.
While we are still in discussions on what we will do, I am sure we will
need to cut down our total amount of lectures per year. So, I was hoping
some of you would share your current practices/curriculum for Diagnostic
Radiology residents. I have some specific questions that would be helpful
for our team:
- Do you run the curriculum over multiple years? If so, how do you deal
with residents missing class periods due to call?
- Do you teach all topics to all residents? Or do you split to specific
groups? Eg: x-ray & fluoro to first years, CT to second years, MRI & NucMed
to third years ...
- Do you bunch or compress the lectures (i.e. a week-long boot camp or
similar) or do you spread the lectures throughout the year?
- Are the physics lectures/curriculum separate from the traditional
clinical lectures across body, MSK, neuro, etc...? Or do you weave within?
- Do you do traditional lectures or have you moved to different modes of
interaction? (We have done hands-on labs but typically can only run these
once or twice per year for a particular modality, often have to limit the
number of students, and have to do some on the weekends.)

I would appreciate any other thoughts you might have. We are trying to
avoid only doing board prep as we all think (a) physics is an important but
often overlooked part of learning for the Radiology residents and (b) many
residents only receive dedicated physics education during their residency.

Best, Steve

Steven Shea, PhD
Associate Professor, MR Scientist
Department of Radiology & Medical Imaging. Loyola Medicine
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/private/intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list/attachments/20250423/2eefefea/attachment.html>