- Joined
- Jul 24, 2014
- Messages
- 47
- Reaction score
- 16
I know a lot of people share similar sentiments about struggling and not loving radiology, having regrets during their first year. Others offer reassurance saying it gets better after that initial year. Well now that I’ve moved onto my 2nd year, I only feel worse about having chosen radiology.
I think the biggest problem is that I still feel (and likely I am) grossly incompetent and that radiology is innately too difficult for me. I struggle with catching all the abnormalities particularly on cross sectional imaging, and when there is an abnormality, I hem and haw over how to describe it. Then I need to look up the differential. It takes a lot of effort and at the end I’m still unsure about the accuracy of my report.
There are certain things that I’m super prone to missing, like lymph nodes, lung nodules, small aneurysms on head/neck CTAs, subtle fat stranding, dilated pulmonary artery, rib fractures, the list goes on and on. Also don’t get me started on the bowel. I can identify obstruction but finding the transition point…forget it. I do study outside of work, but I was never the best at memorizing and have to put in twice as much time to retain info than the average person. Having radiology knowledge is different than having the radiology “eye” and fluency in the vocabulary. Some people seem to have a strong sense of what is normal/abnormal but as an extremely indecisive person, I don’t think my “meter” is well-developed. I try my best to look at a lot of cases and read others’ reports, and there has been small improvement, but I still just don’t “get it”. My classmates all seem to be ahead of me.
This is all coming to a head as I am starting true independent call very very soon, and my poor performance will be revealed to all the attendings as they overread me the next day. So far I’ve “passed” because the attendings will point out my misses during read outs and I can edit my drafts to their liking before they sign off. Does anyone have advice on how I can improve my accuracy, speed, and my reports? Should I ask if I can postpone call? (but I don’t see how I can, there is no one to replace me for those shifts…) Or is this something that call will provide the experience for, accepting that I will inevitably have misses and less than perfect reports?
I think the biggest problem is that I still feel (and likely I am) grossly incompetent and that radiology is innately too difficult for me. I struggle with catching all the abnormalities particularly on cross sectional imaging, and when there is an abnormality, I hem and haw over how to describe it. Then I need to look up the differential. It takes a lot of effort and at the end I’m still unsure about the accuracy of my report.
There are certain things that I’m super prone to missing, like lymph nodes, lung nodules, small aneurysms on head/neck CTAs, subtle fat stranding, dilated pulmonary artery, rib fractures, the list goes on and on. Also don’t get me started on the bowel. I can identify obstruction but finding the transition point…forget it. I do study outside of work, but I was never the best at memorizing and have to put in twice as much time to retain info than the average person. Having radiology knowledge is different than having the radiology “eye” and fluency in the vocabulary. Some people seem to have a strong sense of what is normal/abnormal but as an extremely indecisive person, I don’t think my “meter” is well-developed. I try my best to look at a lot of cases and read others’ reports, and there has been small improvement, but I still just don’t “get it”. My classmates all seem to be ahead of me.
This is all coming to a head as I am starting true independent call very very soon, and my poor performance will be revealed to all the attendings as they overread me the next day. So far I’ve “passed” because the attendings will point out my misses during read outs and I can edit my drafts to their liking before they sign off. Does anyone have advice on how I can improve my accuracy, speed, and my reports? Should I ask if I can postpone call? (but I don’t see how I can, there is no one to replace me for those shifts…) Or is this something that call will provide the experience for, accepting that I will inevitably have misses and less than perfect reports?