There is a misconception in the media and healthcare as to the radiologist’s role in a patient’s health care. I have seen countless medical television episodes that portray a surgeon or ER doctor sitting behind a computer directing an imaging exam and making a diagnosis based on these images as they come across the screen. This has led to patients and often other doctors not recognizing the value in the contribution that the radiologist is making towards patient care.
Like all medical doctors, a radiologist must complete 4 years of undergraduate school, then 4 years of medical school, then 1 year of internship, then 4 years of dedicated radiology residency, and finally a 1 to 2-year optional fellowship in a radiology specialty. The radiology training must be completed at an accredited hospital for the radiologist to become board certified meaning that very strict and challenging requirements must be met specific to radiology. A typical radiologist will review more than 150,000 patient exams in that amount of time so that they can become experts in the field of radiology.
Relying solely on the opinion of a midlevel provider or non-radiologist physician to make your diagnosis based on the imaging you had performed is at best a scary thought but at worst reckless. Sitting in on a weekend conference or having a radiologist review exams with a clinician does not even come close to replacing the years of training and hundreds of thousands of exams that a radiologist has experienced in their careers. You would not go to a radiologist to have your appendix removed so why would you have a non-radiologist make your diagnosis on your brain MRI or abdomen pelvis CT?
Get a second opinion from the expert radiologists at The Medical Consultant and you will know that you are getting the right diagnosis from a specialist doctor in radiology.
