Moderated by Sherry S. Wang, MD, this year’s Fast 5 session addressed some of the hottest topics in radiology, from improving health care access to artificial intelligence and family leave. Each speaker competed for the opportunity to present on a non-clinical topic Monday afternoon on the Arie Crown stage.
Tackling Climate Change from the Reading Room
Julia Schoen, MD, shared her expertise in environmental engineering and her passion for the outdoors with suggestions on how radiologists can help tackle climate change from the reading room.
“Health care is one of the largest polluters in the US, emitting 10% of the country’s greenhouse gases,” said Dr. Schoen, a diagnostic radiology resident at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist.
She said the field of radiology should consider its contribution to carbon emissions, from energy-intensive scanners that waste two-thirds of their total energy usage sitting idle and disposable supplies to lights, heating and cooling and PACS systems that are run constantly.
To develop solutions for making radiology more sustainable, Dr. Schoen invited audience members to join Radiologists for a Sustainable Future (@Rads4SF).
Addressing Imaging Inequality at the Frontline: A Free Imaging Clinic Model for the Underserved
In 2003, the Institute of Medicine reported that minorities receive lower quality health care leading to worse outcomes — a reality that’s only been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The myriad barriers to medical imaging include transportation difficulties, financial instability and race-based ordering bias.
As a resident at Emory Radiology, Charlotte Y. Chung, MD, PhD, now a neuroradiology fellow at New York University, along with her colleagues created a local free imaging clinic under the Georgia Volunteer Health Care Program. For the past year, volunteer medical students and technologists have been providing free ultrasound exams to patients in Clarkston, a city 30 miles outside Atlanta known as the ‘Ellis Island of the South’ for resettling the highest number of refugees per capita in the U.S.
“I hope this demonstrates how a free imaging clinic can be achieved through provider teamwork and innovations for workflow modifications,” Dr. Chung said. “I challenge you to follow our example and propagate the free imaging clinic model in your local community.”
The Millennial Transformation of Radiology
While some people might think Millennials are lazy based on their preference for work-life balance, Angel Gomez-Cintron, MD, who has been radiology residency director at UT Health San Antonio for the past 13 years, has a different perspective.
“In fact, residents today read four times as many studies as I did when I was a resident,” Dr. Gomez-Cintron said. “I believe there is great power in the Millennials’ ability to know what they deserve and their ability to set boundaries.”
He said Millennial radiologists look for meaning in their work beyond money and want everyone in the workforce to have a fair and honest opportunity to shine.
“Millennials stand up for what they believe is right and they won’t tolerate injustice,” he said. “I believe they are a force that will change patient care, and one I trust with my own and my patients’ medical care.”
Embracing AI for Mitigating Health Disparities
Hopes are high for AI and deep learning to aid in the workflow of radiologists, but Noushin Yahyavi, MD, cautioned that algorithms are only as good as the underlying training data.
“For tasks such as the diagnosis of pneumonia on chest radiographs, the ability of deep learning to diagnose disease may approach, and even exceed, the performance of expert radiologists,” said Dr. Yahyavi, assistant professor of radiology at the John Hopkins University in Maryland and an MBA candidate at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.
However, she said a recent study showed deep learning models trained to detect a variety of diseases using gender-imbalanced chest X-ray datasets consistently underperformed on images of the minority gender.
To mitigate bias, Dr. Yahyavi said AI products must be trained on diverse sample sizes with anti-bias algorithms. She also offered examples of AI tools that can help achieve health equity, such as an app that explains imaging exams in different languages and automated appointment reminders and translators for medical jargon.
“We need to think about opportunities to use AI to help mitigate health disparities,” she said.
Supporting Family/Medical Leave: Where Are We, Where Do We Go From Here?
Elizabeth Dibble, MD, spoke to a topic that’s been on the minds of many radiologists: family/medical leave.
“There’s a rising tide of awareness of the importance of family/medical leave and family friendly policies in radiology including the new ABR residency leave policy and ACR’s Resolution 48 for trainees,” said Dr. Dibble, an assistant professor of diagnostic imaging at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
She said many people don’t qualify for a leave through the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
“We really shouldn’t rely on federal law to dictate policy,” Dr. Dibble said. “We have to ensure that radiology groups have leave policies in place that provide a minimum of 12 weeks of leave for all employees in the group.”
With 50% of radiologist leaves taken for personal serious health conditions or to care for an immediate family member, Dr. Dibble said family leave policies will help promote equity, improve retention and protect against burnout for all members of a practice.
Access the presentation, "Fast 5," (M5-RCP49) at Meeting.RSNA.org.