The Department of Radiology has a strong presence throughout the ForWard Curriculum of the School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). Each year, SMPH hosts Medical Education Day, an opportunity for medical educators to share scholarship and programming innovations. This year marked a return to an in-person conference on May 19th, and Assistant Director of Education and Communications for Radiology, Katie Yang, MS represented the Department with two poster presentations. Check out the abstracts of these posters below!
“Synchronous Discussion Sessions for Reflection on Interprofessional Practice Issues”
Authors: Katie Yang, MS and Jason Stephenson, MD
Abstract: To facilitate this joint enterprise within the Diagnostic Radiology elective, we designed an asynchronous discussion board assignment composed of four prompts, each of which provided students with a paper that focused on interprofessional practice issues in radiology. Students were asked to 1) write a critical reflection on what could be done to lessen the impact of these issues on patient care and 2) comment on at least one other student’s post for each prompt. Despite this requirement, students did not respond to questions and challenges posed by others in the comments, limiting the capability to reflect. Therefore, to create a community of practice that facilitated active reflection, we transformed the discussion board assignment into a facilitated synchronous discussion and evaluated the efficacy of these new sessions in engaging students in reflective thinking.
To evaluate the efficacy of the new discussion session in promoting higher-level reflection, students were asked to complete a self-assessment based on the REFLECT rubric at the end of the course. Composite scores of each domain in the rubric (Understanding, Reflection, and Critical Reflection) were compared between students who attended 0, 1, or 2 discussion sessions and students who attended 3 or 4 discussion sessions. Our results did not show a significant difference in the domains of reflective ability, though there was a trend towards significance for the Reflection domain (p=0.068). Narrative feedback provided by the students indicated that the synchronous discussion sessions were helpful and that they appreciated being able to share experiences with peers.
“Student Perception of Imaging Modality Utility by Future Specialty”
Authors: Katie Yang, MS, Matthew Lee, MD, Venkata Meduri, MD, and Jason Stephenson, MD
Abstract: The Diagnostic Radiology elective course is often the last dedicated training in radiology that students receive prior to graduating medical school. During this course, students rotate in 1-2 radiology reading rooms, which are assigned based on student rankings of 12 reading room options prior to the beginning of the course. In the 2021-2022 academic year, we added an optional free-text response question to the ranking form asking if there was additional information that they would like to share to supplement their rankings. Of the 141 students enrolled in the course, 97 chose to provide additional information about their reading room preferences, and 93 of those responses specifically referenced the specialty that they planned or had applied to for residency.
To identify student perception of imaging modality importance in their future practice, we examined the reading room rankings of students going into the following specialties: Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, General Surgery, Pediatrics, Neurology, and OB-Gyn. Our results show that students personalize their rotation experience according to their future specialty; however, the reading rooms that they select may not be the most helpful to them in their future specialty. Potential course improvements include specialty-specific lists of recommended reading rooms.