By Jim Knaub
When an emergency physician calls you to discuss a patient, which of these responses are you more likely to give?
A. “I diagnosed Mrs. Brown with a small bowel obstruction.”
B. “Mrs. Brown has a small bowel obstruction.”
I read several AuntMinnie.com forum posts discussing whether radiologists should “…make it clear and shift the conversation from ‘the patient has’ to ‘I made the diagnosis.’”
It seems clear that the original poster on the forum postulates that radiologists might benefit from highlighting their important contribution by putting it in a more active voice. His view merits consideration. Being available to referrers for questions certainly is important, but might making a little more show of your contribution in discussion, phone calls, and reports make a difference with referring physicians? That would be hard to measure or prove.
You could apply the same postulate to patients. Should radiologists wave their flags a little so patients see your contribution? Given that a large chunk of the population thinks radiologists are the people that perform X-rays, it might not be a bad idea. Patients rarely see you. The only interaction I’ve ever had with a radiologist in my or my kids’ care has been with the guy who inserted the PICC line when I needed IV antibiotics. For the record, Dr. Chen is a very personable man who smoothly explained the procedure, obtained my informed consent, and inserted the line. Another time when I’d taken my son for an X-ray, I did see someone scurry across the hall—a technologist told me she was a radiologist.
Most of my imaging encounters to date have involved the sports medicine doc explaining my soccer-playing children’s various fractures. They’ve tended to take great care discussing kids’ injuries with parents. Sometimes they would refer to the radiology report and sometimes not. One orthopedist told me that he doesn’t usually read the radiology reports.
By my proximity to imaging, I understand that a radiologist is somewhere behind the curtain—and feel no need for any sort of customer service visit from the doctor. When my exam is not an emergency, I probably will have left the building before my exam is read.
The original poster on the thread I read concluded with advice from a surgical colleague: “You have to blow your own horn if no one else will.”
I’m curious whether you think the idea is important to radiologists and their services. Does it help? Does it really matter to patients, or is it just an idea that may show up on some hard-to-quantify hospital patient satisfaction survey?
— Jim Knaub is editor of Radiology Today.