Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Do you ever feel like you're drowning in data? If you're a radiologist, you're not alone: A new study found that today's radiologists have seen the number of cross-sectional images they need to review increase by a factor of 10 since 1999.
In fact, radiologists these days are interpreting a cross-sectional image every three to four seconds over an eight-hour workday, according to an article in our Imaging Leaders Community.
What's driving the growth? The biggest contributors are the enormous changes in technology seen in both CT and MRI -- changes that are enabling these modalities to produce vast quantities of data. But are these advances outstripping the ability of humans to process all of this information?
Read more about the study by clicking here, or visit the community at leaders.auntminnie.com.
Near-miss errors in radiology
A new study is shedding some disturbing light on near-miss errors in radiology, defined as close calls in which the wrong patient or study was involved in the care process, but the mistake was caught before it affected patient care.
Researchers from Emory University analyzed near-miss events reported at their facility over four years, and they found almost 70 events in which the wrong patient was involved, images were mislabeled, or the wrong case was interpreted by a radiologist. They classified the errors by type of modality, time of day, and other characteristics to try to identify the factors that could be leading to the events.
What did they find? For one thing, portable chest radiography was the modality that contributed by far to the most near-miss events. But some other factors, such as time of day, did not have the effect you might think. Learn more about the study by clicking here, or go to our Digital X-Ray Community at xray.auntminnie.com.
Minnies nominations
As we head into August, you still have a couple of weeks left to let us know who you think should be nominated for a Minnies award. You can get started by clicking here, or go to minnies.auntminnie.com.
