|
 |
 |
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
The Residency Program
Residents enter the UCSF diagnostic radiology residency program after completing a preliminary post-graduate year. Radiology is a new language, indeed a new world, for incoming residents, even those who have had significant prior clinical or research experience prior to entering residency. Residents initially rotate through basic services, such as pediatric radiology, thoracic imaging, abdominal imaging, neuroradiology, ultrasound, and musculoskeletal imaging, prior to taking night call, beginning in the middle of the first year of residency.
Residents must take 16 weeks in nuclear medicine and 12 weeks in mammography to comply with regulations of the ACGME and the American Board of Radiology, and they rotate through all of the other subpecialities, as well. Recognizing that every resident is unique, however, the UCSF training program provides a structured and individualized learning experience to maximize the potential of each trainee as they progress through their transition into their new careers. Residents have up to 12 months of elective time and may choose to have a focused experience in a clinical field or in an area of research interest.
Clinical Education
"When you come in each day and learn from those that write the text books and give the lectures, you realize what a special place this is."
The faculty in the Department of Radiology are internationally recognized for their clinical expertise and research accomplishments. Even more importantly, the faculty are highly skilled in teaching and are committed to resident education. The faculty take great interest in providing lectures and reviews every day, including the structured core curriculum for all residents, and the weekly conference series for junior residents. Morning and noon conferences are held daily at UCSF Medical Center (Moffitt-Long) and at the VA Hospital. A morning conference is held at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH), and residents at Mt. Zion Hospital attend Moffitt-Long morning conference. Conferences are often case-based ("hot seat") conferences designed to stimulate thought, simulate clinical problem solving, and to prepare residents for their oral boards. The faculty also give lectures on areas of their expertise. Additional weekly first year introductory conferences are provided by the faculty for the first 6 months to prepare residents for taking call. Hideyo Minagi, MD, one of the department's best-loved teachers, regularly holds short teaching sessions prior to morning conferences at SFGH. Dr. Minagi, who specializes in trauma, instructs with a relaxed and congenial atmosphere. Invited speakers from around the country give Grand Rounds at various times during the year. This lecture series provides UCSF residents an opportunity to interact with well-known and respected faculty members from other institutions. Every year, the senior residents invite the speaker of their choice for a visiting professorship, several months before the oral boards examination. This offers the residents a chance to learn from a renowned radiologist in an informal setting, rounding out their educational experience in the manner they feel most appropriate. The Department of Radiology has instituted a "core curriculum" lecture series for the residents. All residents from each imaging site participate in dedicated lectures on the fundamentals of each subspecialty throughout the year. Every imaging subspecialty provides a block lectures on core material related to radiological practice two mornings a week. Lectures are teleconferenced to the VA hospital. Extra lectures in physics and research methodology and design are also provided. A journal club is conducted with each section's lectures to help residents read literature critically. Each journal club meeting focuses on one or two significant papers. The meetings are conducted by two faculty members with training and expertise in epidemiology and research design. In the later winter and spring, the faculty provide specialized review sessions several evenings per week for fourth-year radiology residents preparing for the radiology oral boards examination. All fourth year residents are excused from their rotations so that they may attend the UCSF Resident Review Course, which is held every year in San Francisco and is now the largest such course in the country. UCSF offers an expansive array of digital teaching media, ranging from web-based programs and CD-ROMS produced at UCSF to an electronic teaching file with over 30,000 cases. Cases may be pre-arranged on a laptop computer in a random format or in the form of a series of cases designed to illustrate a particular differential diagnosis in an efficient manner. Lectures are also available on DVD from the numerous radiological courses organized by UCSF each year. Lectures from our video archive are used for teaching conferences at several other radiology residencies. Research Opportunities Research is an integral component of our residency, and all of residents now undertake research. Flexibility is the hallmark of the program, but most residents schedule one to six months of dedicated research time. Residents may choose to devote up to 12 months to a project without extending the length of residency. For further information, please see the Research page. Call Responsibilities
"The tradition of early independent responsibility with expert backup here at UCSF provides unparalleled training and experience which results in a level of confidence that I haven't often found among colleagues at other programs."
Radiology resident call has traditionally started at the end of the calendar year during the first year of residency. Due to nationwide radiology residency policy changes, residents starting in July 2008 will begin taking in-house call at the beginning of their second year of residency at Moffitt-Long and SFGH; call at the VA is covered by the resident at Moffitt-Long. In-house call will involve a night-float system with the majority of call front-loaded into the 2nd year of residency. Call frequency drops over the four years and is no greater than one or two calls per month during the fourth year of residency. Fourth year residents are usually removed from the call pool as the oral boards examination approaches. During the second and third year, as residents complete rotations in interventional radiology, they enter a back-up call pool. Residents take this back up call by pager at SFGH, and cover emergency MR, interventional, and ultrasound requests. The in-house residents are always backed up by attendings and fellows, who are available for consultation and are able to view images via teleradiology. In addition, interventional and ultrasound call, neuroradiology MR, thoracic MR, abdominal MR, and musculoskeletal MR back up call is handled by attendings and fellows at Moffitt-Long Hospital. Perks The UCSF diagnostic radiology residency has several unique benefits. The generosity of the Margulis Society is an important perk that our residents enjoy. The Margulis Society, named for our former chairman, Alexander Margulis, MD, is an alumni society dedicated to the radiology residency. The Margulis Society awards resident research grants and accolades, donates educational materials to the department, and funds the radiology-pathology course at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The Margulis society pays the AFIP tuition and provides the resident with more money to defray the costs of travel and housing. The Department of Radiology furnishes an additional $6000 over four years ($1000 per year for three years, $3000 available in the last year of residency) for residents to use for educational purposes. Residents use this money for computers, software, CD-roms, books, and conferences at which they are not presenting a paper. The Department of Radiology funds resident travel to conferences at which they are presenting their research. The department also pays for the entire American Board of Radiology examination fee, currently $2800. The medical center, and the department in combination provide $8400 per year as a housing allowance for residents. The medical center also gives medical, dental, and vision insurance free of charge to all residents and their spouses/domestic partners and children. Radiology residents have a dedicated library, the Stone Library, as well as a Learning Resource Center, both of which may be accessed 24 hours a day. These two facilities have bound radiology journals, textbooks (both recent and older versions), computers, and educational CD-roms and laser discs. Internal moonlighting opportunities pay at least $75/hour for a radiologist to be present for contrast injections, primarily for MRI. The shifts offer plenty of quiet time for studying or calling friends, since moonlighting residents are not required to obtain IV access or perform the injections, but they do evaluate patients in the unusual circumstance of a contrast reaction. Four-hour shifts (for $300) are available on most weekday evenings and eight-hour shifts (for $600) on weekends. The residents also enjoy use of their own website, the Residents' Corner. This website was conceived and constructed by a radiology resident in 1999 and continues to be managed by residents with radiology departmental support. The resident website provides efficent communication for all residents (call schedules, master rotation schedule, etc), as well as links to books, teaching cases on the web, unknown teaching cases posted by UCSF faculty, among other useful information. It has become an important means of communication among the residents and administration. Radiology residents may attend UCSF continuing medical education (CME) conferences free of registration charge. The department has the most active CME program of any radiology department in the U.S., with approximately 25 courses a year at locations around the world -- including Hawaii, Europe, Southern Africa, and Australia. After Residency
"I enjoy meeting the new residents and definitely miss the residents who have graduated and moved on. Well, at least most of the residents...."
In recent years, all of our graduating residents have entered fellowship programs of their choice, and most elect to stay at UCSF for subspecialty training. After fellowship, many of our alumni now choose to remain in an academic setting. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
