MedEdPORTAL (Sep 2010)
A Primer on Reading Chest Radiographs
Abstract
Abstract Introduction This resource is a PowerPoint-based teaching tool designed to help medical students improve their skills at reading plain chest X-ray images. It focuses on how to read chest X-rays in a systematic manner, reviewing the main items that students must consider when reading an X-ray and the primary questions they should ask when considering each item. Methods This resource contains a large number of pictorial examples that demonstrate basic principles of chest radiography and common findings they should be able to identify at their stage of training as well as the differential diagnoses for those findings. It has been designed as a tool for local and distance learning and is organized such that students can move through the tutorial at their own pace and complete it over multiple sittings if necessary. Results A formal evaluation of the tutorial's effectiveness as a teaching tool has not been completed. The tutorial is primarily used by students at our institution who rotate on the pulmonary consult service as part of a clerkship during the fourth year of medical school. Formal pre- and postmodule learning assessments have not been created for the tutorial as the students' chest radiology skills are typically judged by evaluating how their chest X-ray interpretations improve over the entire rotation. Anecdotally, many students on the rotation have commented that they found the tutorial to be one of the more useful chest radiology materials they have encountered during their training. Students and residents on other rotations in our system are also beginning to use the tutorial in increasing numbers as information is disseminated about its availability. Discussion One limitation of the resource is its length. It is unlikely that a learner, particularly one in the early stages of their training, can complete this in one sitting. To address this problem, we have designed the file to allow learners to work at their own pace and return to the tutorial at different points without having to work through it all from the beginning again. Another limitation of the resource is that it currently lacks an interactive quiz to test whether learners have acquired the necessary skills. One of our goals is to add such a quiz in the future.
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