Itemized Imaging Reports Preferred in Emergency Radiology

Physicians prefer itemized imaging reports (IRs) over point-and-click reports (PCRs) and basic structured reports (BSRs) for emergency radiology reports, although both IR and PCR were equal in quality metrics, according to a study published in the journal x.  

Researchers from Thailand developed a survey to determine physicians' preference for the three types of structured imaging reports.

Respondents (mean age 29.4) included 61 radiologists and 40 referring physicians. They were asked about demographics, necessity of imaging report, report quality (content, format and organization, and language), process of reporting, and components of imaging report. “A 10-point Likert scale (most dislike, 1; most like, 10) was used for preference to add a greater level of detail of liking that the respondents could express to a particular pattern of reporting,” the authors wrote. “For agreement, a 5-point scale (strongly disagree, 1; strongly agree, 5) was used because five levels of agreement were considered adequate for questions (less granularity needed), helpful to force an opinion (ie, into ‘‘neutral’’ or ‘‘agree’’) and easier for respondents to answer.”

The results of the survey showed that IR was preferred over PCR and BSR overall:

The researchers concluded that although IR and PCR were equal in quality metrics, physicians preferred IR over PCR; BSR ranked lowest of the three imaging reports in preference, report quality, and report process.