The head of radiology at the Maryland VA presented for the closing plenary. He had a really great presentation about human factors and ergonomics in radiology, and what his hospital has been doing about it. He spoke about how, originally, coronary diagnostics were performed with just one or two x-rays. Then, in the 70’s, a few CT scans. Then in the 80’s, a couple hundred scans; 90’s hundreds; recently, more than 4000 scans per diagnosis. At 50 patients a day, there is no way to look at it all without animation and colorization to find the flaws in a beating heart.
Yet in most radiology departments, radiologists spend 8+ hours per day sitting at borrowed workstations with bad screens, cannibalized input devices, harsh fluorescent lighting, poor chairs, poor posture, etc. And few labs are completely film-less, even though the digital replacement technology has been available for 15 years. In fact, 20% of radiologists don’t have their vision corrected to 20/20, yet lives depend on a correct visual diagnosis. Estimates are that only 85% of potential diagnosis are caught, with a 10-15% false positive rate. And large portions of performance can be attributed to visual and physical fatigue from poor working conditions.
He ended with a video that his team made, “Digital Eye for the Analog Guy,” to teach other radiologists about the problems in their current work environments, and the benefits of going to ergonomic workspaces with digital imaging. It was really well done (the Queer Eye production team actually worked on it because the lab was built through GE who owns NBC who runs Bravo…), and it really had a lot of wonderful content.
No matter how wonderful a work environment could be created, though, I couldn’t ever do a radiologist’s job! Every day staring at thousands of images with people’s lives at stake! But I’m sure glad that this diagnostic technology is out there.
Great presentation.
