Introducing First-Year Medical Students to Radiology: Implementation and Impact

Rationale and objectives: The aims of our study were (1) to describe a new educational intervention for first-year medical students that gave a substantial, early exposure to radiology and (2) to examine how this early exposure was received by the students.

Materials and methods: Our new curriculum incorporated a new 2-week course very early in the M1 year entitled Foundations of Diagnostics and Therapeutics. Among other topics, the course included a substantial introduction to radiology primarily through small-group seminars and online materials, administered using a flipped-classroom approach. The students were given pre- and postcourse surveys that assessed the degree to which they felt prepared to learn about radiology, as well as their interest in radiology. Results were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

Results: Survey responses were obtained from 170 students before the course and 65 students afterward. Upon completing the course, students showed significantly increased academic interest in radiology (P = .008) and a heightened perception of the effect of radiology on patient care (P = .04), without a significant change in interest in pursuing radiology as a career. Students showed an overwhelmingly positive response to the course, although some noted that previous anatomy training would have been helpful. Eighty percent agreed or strongly agreed that the flipped-classroom structure was an effective educational model.

Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that students were very excited to gain exposure to radiology early in their medical school curriculum, and such exposure led to an improved perception of the field.