[Intl_DxMedPhys] Diagnostic Resident Physics Curriculum Ideas

Mon May 19 13:54:03 EDT 2025

Hello all,

Here is a presentation I prepared and used in 2019 to convince our RAD resident director and chiefs to increase the hours of Physics didactics. (you’ll have to update it)

Mind you, we have 2 residency programs, one for RAD and the other for NucMed. Not much overlapping. And aside from didactics, we already had:

  *   Intro about Rad Safety to newbies: 2 sessions of intro bootcamp for resident incomings
  *   Course offered to medical students: 2 sessions for MD students (an elective) covering imaging topics
  *   Prep for ABR: Several days of core-review training (“just to pass the test”). This was mostly going over Raphex and other question banks, etc
  *   Prep for In-Training exams: 1 session to prepare them for the ACR-IT exam, which I basically went over previous year questions. (now I do the same for the Nuc Med residents before they take their ABNM exam in Feb)
  *   Online aids: In-house supplementary modules (similar to the RSNA ones)
  *   Hands-On: I used to do 1-2 hours per year for Fluoro. Now I do that for Nuc Med. (e.g. I teach them about kernels and recons by having them run thru an ACR Jaszczak semi-annual)

They were going to cut into the didactics, but I think we prevented that successfully.

Eventually it comes down to how you teach. I started putting in a lot of pitfall examples and artifacts into every lecture to try to tie the physics concepts I was teaching into “shit that can happen if attention is not paid to physics”. 😊

Once the chiefs understood how useful (if not essential) physics is to their careers, it was smooth sailing.

Anyways,

Good luck to all.

[cid:image001.png at 01DBC8BA.FE173E50]
Nima Kasraie, PhD, MSc, DABR, DABSNM
Lead Physicist, Children’s Medical Center Dallas<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.childrens.com/__;!!KGKeukY!2MIRAaRBmYFSZYMSX_K0gBoMniO_TOLigjokqZBONG9FbTlCYgjGdBBkY-ihFg1aWoKqKrdtmNGRcMbUPphXicxlcco8VJlnQwyhESteAY6hlCZE3tYoqg$ >
Associate Professor, Department of Radiology, UT Southwestern<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://profiles.utsouthwestern.edu/profile/187443/nima-kasraie.html__;!!KGKeukY!2MIRAaRBmYFSZYMSX_K0gBoMniO_TOLigjokqZBONG9FbTlCYgjGdBBkY-ihFg1aWoKqKrdtmNGRcMbUPphXicxlcco8VJlnQwyhESteAY6hlCa-4uqPlQ$ >
Phone: 214-648-7978
[cid:image002.png at 01DBC8BA.FE173E50]

From: Intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list <intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list-bounces+nima.kasraie=utsouthwestern.edu at lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of Steven Shea via Intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2025 1:52 PM
To: intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list at lists.osu.edu
Subject: [Intl_DxMedPhys] Diagnostic Resident Physics Curriculum Ideas

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

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
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

________________________________

UT Southwestern

Medical Center

The future of medicine, today.
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