The Situation of Radiology in Medical Education in the United States and Canada

Abstract

RECENT medical literature frequently refers to the “advances of the last twenty-five or fifty years.” Such periods of time cannot properly be applied to the progress of radiology. Its advancement must of necessity be measured by some shorter standard. In this country radiology is scarcely forty years old. Yet, in that brief period, our specialty has made stupendous strides. Skinner (1) aptly states that “no other field of human research has enjoyed such immediate and universal participation, such profound adaptability to problems of human disease, such extensive availability to the world's population, and such splendid benefit to unconquered fields of diagnosis and therapy as roentgen diagnosis and radiation therapy.” Although medicine, generally, has been passing through a very difficult period, a period in which economic problems and the socialization of medicine have been uppermost in the minds of those controlling the destiny of organized medicine, radiology has continued to advance. In like manner, during this same time, the scope of medical education has expanded considerably. Hospitals have improved their physical equipment; a closer relationship has sprung up between hospitals and medical schools, and an increasing number of institutions, by fulfilling the “Principles of Graduate Medical Schools,” have earned the right to give graduate medical instruction. It seems advisable, therefore, that an organization such as the International Congress of Radiology should set aside a certain time for the consideration of the tremendous problem of education in radiology. For concomitant with the development of this specialty, the use of radiologic methods in medical education has been swift. With these thoughts in mind, our President has asked me to prepare for you a statement concerning the present status of radiology in medical education in the United States. It is our hope that the consideration of some of the facts connected with this problem will assist in the further development of an even closer relationship between radiology and the other branches of medicine and surgery, particularly in reference to the newer conceptions and methods of medical education. In order to discuss this subject in as systematic and comprehensive a manner as possible, we should like to review some of the influencing factors that have placed radiology in its present position in medical education and then take up the details of its instruction in undergraduate, graduate, and even more advanced courses. I. Influence of the American Medical Association Upon Medical Education in General Medical education in the United States is regulated by rules and specifications of the American Medical Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and the various State requirements for licensure to practise (2).