Abstract
IntroductionDue to the universal shortage of radiologists, medical officers are largely responsible for acute trauma radiograph reporting in public sector healthcare facilities in well-resourced countries. In poorly-resourced countries, a shortage of medical officers results in most acute trauma radiographs being unreported. In the European Union (EU), experienced radiographers with no specific training have been shown to be more accurate than medical officers in trauma radiograph reporting, while EU radiographers who receive additional training can reach accuracies comparable to radiologists. In some EU countries, the role of the radiographer has been extended to include trauma reporting. However, there has been no study of the accuracy of trauma radiograph reporting by radiographers in Africa, where task-shifting could yield potentially greater benefits, due to shortages of both radiologists and medical officers. The aim of this study was therefore to compare the accuracy of acute trauma-radiograph reporting by medical officers and senior radiographers in an African settingMethodsA prospective study was conducted at a South African hospital from November 2013-April 2014. Medical officers and senior radiographers reported the same set of appendicular skeleton trauma radiographs. Reporting accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were calculated using a consultant radiologist's report as the reference standard. Differences were evaluated using the Mann-Whitney U test, with p < 0.05 significantResultsSenior radiographers achieved significantly higher reporting accuracy and sensitivity than medical officers (81.5% vs 67.8%, p = 0.002)ConclusionSenior radiographers represent a potentially important resource for acute trauma-radiograph reporting in the public healthcare sector in Africa.
Highlights
Due to the universal shortage of radiologists, medical officers are largely responsible for acute trauma radiograph reporting in public sector healthcare facilities in well-resourced countries
In the European Union (EU), experienced radiographers with no specific training have been shown to be more accurate than medical officers in reporting trauma radiographs of the appendicular skeleton [14], while EU radiographers who receive additional training can reach accuracies comparable to radiologists [15,16,17,18]
Experienced radiographers achieved significantly higher overall accuracy in acute appendicular skeleton fracture reporting (81.5% vs 67.8%, p = 0.002) (Table 1)
Summary
Due to the universal shortage of radiologists, medical officers are largely responsible for acute trauma radiograph reporting in public sector healthcare facilities in well-resourced countries. In the European Union (EU), experienced radiographers with no specific training have been shown to be more accurate than medical officers in trauma radiograph reporting, while EU radiographers who receive additional training can reach accuracies comparable to radiologists. There has been no study of the accuracy of trauma radiograph reporting by radiographers in Africa, where task-shifting could yield potentially greater benefits, due to shortages of both radiologists and medical officers. Conclusion: Senior radiographers represent a potentially important resource for acute trauma-radiograph reporting in the public healthcare sector in Africa. In the European Union (EU), experienced radiographers with no specific training have been shown to be more accurate than medical officers in reporting trauma radiographs of the appendicular skeleton [14], while EU radiographers who receive additional training can reach accuracies comparable to radiologists [15,16,17,18]. High-income countries on other continents are exploring this task-shifting option [5,16,19]
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