Inquiry concludes first-year residents not ready for call

A Harvard study appears to validate a decision by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requiring at least one year of radiological training before residents take call. Dr. Suvranu Ganguli and colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center used a DICOM-based simulation module to test residents after a month-long emergency radiology lecture series ran from 2004 through 2008. The computer-based testing module included actual emergency room cases and helped investigators compare first-year and upper-level resident call preparedness. Study results suggest the core curriculum training module alone did not prepare first-year residents to the level of call preparedness reached by their upper-level colleagues. Investigators published findings in the February issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (2009;192:539-544).