There are two, hour-long diagnostic radiologic teaching conferences each day, one at 8 a.m. and another at noon.

It has always been the philosophy of the Department that residents’ conferences reign supreme and take precedence over any service obligations so that, with very few exceptions, all of the residents are expected to and do attend each and every conference, regardless of their subspecialty assignment.

Every conference is monitored by at least one faculty member who is assigned to be the leader of that conference. Additional faculty attend conferences as staffing permits.

Regular conferences continue when the residents rotate through St. Christopher's Hospital for Children for their major pediatric radiology experience staffed by an outstanding group of pediatric radiologists at that hospital.

Morning Conferences

These include a didactic lecture course in radiologic physics offered by an in-house physics lecturer. This course is supplemented by the faculty to highlight areas that involve patient safety and practical applications of physics principles.

Every other Friday morning, there is a Resident Case Presentation Conference with the Program Director in which a resident prepares interesting cases in advance and shows them as unknowns to the other residents. These conferences usually focus on the more esoteric and unusual diagnoses and draw heavily upon both the Department’s cases and outside teaching files. Observation, description and the differential diagnosis of findings are stressed. Within the past few years, residents have used this forum to develop and enhance their teaching and presentation skills.

Once a month, all residents review the appropriate, recent radiologic literature with emphasis on developing a critical analysis of the articles chosen. This Journal Club, monitored by Dr. Cheryl Kirby, is attended by all of the residents and appropriate staff.

On most Wednesday mornings, a special Combined Faculty-Resident Case Conference is held. The emphasis during these conferences is on radiologic diagnosis, patient management and the proper use of the multiple imaging modalities available to radiologists. On some Wednesday mornings, the pathologically-proven missed or misinterpreted studies are shown during Morbidity/Mortality Conference with the goal of making appropriate teaching points to avoid such occurrences in the future.

The other morning conferences are clinically-oriented, resident film-reading sessions. These include conferences in Angio/Interventional, mammography, and a monthly Cardiac Radiology Conference.

 

Noon Conferences

Each day at noon there is a faculty-monitored, resident film-reading session for one hour. These conferences take the form of didactic lectures and/or case-based conferences.

During most of these noon conferences, residents discuss cases which are unknown to them and their discussion is guided by the assigned faculty in attendance with active participation by the other residents. During each four-week cycle of conferences, all of the major subspecialty areas of diagnostic radiology are covered at least once, some more often.

Most conferences feature case material generated by the faculty although at least six conferences each month have cases selected by the resident. Two of these resident-generated conferences are held with the Program Director. The residents are expected to select cases, abstract the pertinent clinical information, guide the discussion and introduce outside reading they have done about the cases.

Conference topics and selection of cases is guided by the written curriculum for that subspecialty. We attempt to cover almost all of the written curriculum every two years so that every resident is exposed to the full curriculum at least twice during the Program.

 

Guest Lecturer Series

The Department sponsors a series of guest lecturers during the academic year from all subspecialty areas to challenge our residents and expand their scope of learning.

Other Conferences

Residents receive considerable experience while accompanying a faculty radiologist to one of many inter-departmental conferences held each month. These combined clinician-radiologist conferences include Neuroradiology, Pediatric, Radiologic/Pathology, Pulmonary, Lung Cancer, Breast Cancer, Tumor Board, Urology, Orthopedics, Rheumatology, and GI Oncology conferences. During these conferences, the resident learns how to serve as the imaging consultant in a multi-specialty setting.

All of our residents attend the four-week course at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in radiologic pathology. In addition, all residents participate in about 50, one-hour radiologic-pathology conferences offered jointly by the Departments of Radiology and Pathology. In this monthly conference, the most interesting and educational gross pathologic specimens removed by our surgical staff in the previous month are brought to the conference where a staff pathologist goes over the pathology while a faculty radiologist and our residents review the accompanying imaging study.

Our residents also receive extensive training in critical thinking through on-going lectures and workshops that focus on research fundamentals, statistics, research design, ethics in medicine and critical appraisal of the literature.

Outside Conferences

There are numerous city-wide conferences, lectures, meetings and seminars in radiology in the City of Philadelphia which the residents are encouraged to attend.

Monthly society meetings in the City focus on interventional radiology, orthopedic radiology with pathologic correlation and a meeting of the Philadelphia Roentgen Ray Society, the oldest such society in the country, which brings prominent local and national radiologists to the City to speak about cutting-edge issues of the day.

The Department sponsors our residents’ registration, lodging and travel expenses so that they can attend two, nationally-sponsored conferences of proven educational value during the four years of the Program, in addition to the department subsidy for the AFIP course. The residents attend the annual meeting of the Radiologic Society of North America as one of these conferences and a week-long educational conference of the resident’s choice (with the Program Director’s approval) usually serves as the second sponsored meeting.

In addition, residents may be subsidized if they present an original scientific work at a national meeting and both our incoming and outgoing Chief Residents are fully subsidized to attend the annual national meeting of the American Association of Academic Chief Residents in Radiology.