I haven’t written much about radiology, namely because there isn’t much to write. Our clerkship has, unfortunately, been less than productive. I don’t know if it’s just poor scheduling plus lots of conferences and flus, but we’ve had a number of classes cancelled, and the morning readout sessions seem more focused on getting through the images than teaching about them. A number of us think it would have been better to just get a textbook, some websites, and take the month off to study. Most of the other clerkships I’ve had so far at least had some component of teaching during the physicians’ work day.

I’ve also become pretty frustrated with the constant radiologist obsession with income. It’s definitely more prominent in the younger docs and residents than the older physicians, but more than anyone else so far our lecturers have expounded the virtues of radiology for the amount of money one can make. Maybe I’ll feel the same way in one year’s time–I’m not above saying that I won’t–but as a third-year student, still fairly new to clinics and not-so-jaded, it was really unattractive.

I spent 45 minutes one day waiting for a fellow and an attending to start reading films while the attending whispered to the fellow about his new job, how much money he can make a month, and how much time he gets off per year. After being told “we’re about to start reading” 5 or 6 times, I finally got up and walked out of the room, feeling so frustrated. Had I spent another second in the room I felt like I would have started to turn jaded and bitter down to my core. (This was in addition to the fact that the radiologists in the room had described clinicians as “annoying” when they ask the radiologist for help reading a film.)

We must, of course, remind ourselves that this is not all radiologists, and maybe it’s not even a fair representation of the radiologists about which I write; maybe they had a bad morning, or didn’t get any sleep last night, or who knows what. But their effect on me was the same. Just another personal reminder that my behavior, attitude, and actions do affect the way other people see the world.

In light of the lack of time spent in the classroom, I have come up with a great list of radiology online resources, which are truly excellent:

LearningRadiology – My favorite, by far. Talks specifically for medical students, quizes, cases of the week, all in really easy to understand format. I thank this website for helping me to get a general understanding of the chest radiograph.

Yale Cardiothoracic Imaging – A beautifully-designed website, easy to use, with great images and illustrations, all annotated. Has normal anatomy plus a number of basic diseases.

Radiologyeducation.com and medicalstudent.com have a huge number of links; the UCSF Radiology website also has a great number as well.

I’ll be adding more as the week goes by; I have a number that are bookmarked, but I’m not ready to give the full Over My Med Body stamp of approval.

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