Bite-Sized CME: Accessible, Relevant 15-Minute Case Reviews

Radiologists are savoring new selections on their CME plan menu: Succinct, quarter-credit case reviews, available free from MEDNAX Radiology Education. Since April 2019, we’ve been making weekly additions to our library of 15-minute Radiology Case Reviews, and radiologists are eating them up.

Accessible and impactful

Looking at continuing education at large, most of the educational materials out there for radiologists are static PowerPoints. They lack dynamic annotations, cinematic images, and interactivity.

About 10 or 15 years ago, we started talking about the need to present cases in an ingestible, impactful format but it took some time for communications technology to evolve to the point that the concept became feasible, as I discussed with Imaging Biz in July 2019.

For our 15-minute case reviews, we go with the smallest amount of accreditation a physician can claim, to keep them short and sweet. Each “CME of the Week” is the kind of thing people can do in the downtime between cases or on the train to work. It’s a quick chance to learn from a few interesting cases and earn CMEs.

Ensuring relevance

When developing topics, we look for cases that are contemporary and relevant. We don’t waste time with repetitive, routine examples that don’t present a cognitive challenge – we use cases with multiple findings and unusual manifestations to represent the spectrum of pathologies in any one topic in a linear, logical, and efficient fashion.

Our proprietary reading platform has a “teaching-file” feature built in, which allows any vRad radiologist to flag, tag, and permanently save a study if it seems worthy. From these archives we can anonymize and export the strongest cases to use as teaching aids. As there are over 40,000 studies in our collection, it’s got to be quite a case to make the cut.

I review suggested cases every month and research outcomes for each patient. I access surgical and pathology reports, review charts, and obtain later imaging studies, all of which is incorporated into these presentations.

The resulting cases are timely and relevant, pulled from recent emergency studies across the country.  These resources have a direct effect on patient care and enable our radiologists to keep apprised of current imaging and pathology trends, as demonstrated in this recent email from vRad radiologist Jeremy Collette:

Hi Ben!
I saw (for the first time in actual practice) an intussusception in an older adult. The nidus was enteric suture from a remote surgery. I’m not sure I would have known what that was if I hadn’t watched your bariatric emergencies video (literally) the night before.

Expanding the vision

We are adding to the library every week. There will ultimately be a complete emergency imaging curriculum with trauma and emergency presentations of all major systems.

I think we’re raising the bar for radiology education. There’s a need for more polish, forethought, and technology utilization to better emulate the experience of image interpretation. Our presentation approach makes the information more directly applicable to the actual performance of radiology.

I invite all to access the complete library of 15-minute Radiology Case Reviews and the growing selection of other free CME courses and webinars available from MEDNAX Radiology Education.