Medical education research: Challenges and opportunities in the scholarship of discovery

Abstract

In 1990, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) changed the requirements for diagnostic radiology residency to require residents to have 6 months of radiology training prior to taking independent call. In 2007, the requirements were again revised, requiring residents to have 12 months of radiology training prior to taking independent call (Rumack 2007). The change was justified as follows: during 6 months of training, residents cannot be exposed to standard 4-week rotations in all subspecialty areas of radiology, and residents are more accurate in formulating preliminary interpretations if they have 12 months rather than 6 months of exposure to the specialty. Resident results in the American College of Radiology in-service examination, which show a steady increase in scores with each year of training, were used to justify the latter. Furthermore, other medical specialties required constant supervision for first-year residents by more senior residents or in-house supervision of residents by faculty members. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.