I did my medical school and radiology residency from India, but was also fortunate to spend three years in the US for subspecialty training in various clinical fellowships. I believe these amazing experiences in my formative years across both the systems made me a more complete radiologist. If I compare the residency training in both systems as a neutral observer, Indian residents tend to have deeper knowledge about a wide variety of subjects thanks to our habit of studying from textbooks. However, at the same time, this over-reliance on textbook learning also leads to the development of a mindset where continuing medical education is also focused on books supplemented with some review articles or Radiology Clinics editions, and not original articles. The lack of access to most paid articles and the lack of time and experience in doing research during residency and subsequently during radiology practice also doesn’t leave much time or inclination to understand the nuances of complex study methodologies and their interpretations. While many radiology residents and practicing radiologists subscribe to various ‘case of the day’ and ‘interesting image’ sort of blogs and sites, lesser would subscribe to and read the monthly Table of Contents of say Radiology and AJR as frequently. This is where training abroad really helped me; the enabling environment and dedicated research time there helped nurture a sound scientific temperament and understand the importance of original research.

To overcome some of these deficiencies in our training programs, we started the Journal Club for our residents in Tata Memorial Hospital a month and a half ago. The limited experience with residents presenting in the last two Journal Clubs reinforced my feeling that radiology residents need more on this front, besides also demonstrating that they have a natural aptitude to understanding these nuances once explained (after all, they are the top 10 centile of NEET!). A chance discussion with a senior medical oncologist in TMH gave me the idea to start this new section on Café Roentgen titled ‘Journal Watch’, where short min videos lucidly explaining important original articles, their methodology, findings, limitations, conclusions, and their implications (to the best of my still limited understanding) will be posted. Journal Watch will try to cover some of the important landmark scientific articles related to radiology, but is not meant as a way for residents or radiologists to remain up to date with all recent research. Rather, the point of this section will be to make everyone comfortable with research methodology and critically analyzing a study’s strengths and limitations, and encourage everyone to read more articles of interest similarly by oneself. Keeping that in mind, you might find older articles as also certain lateral topics being covered.

Do watch this space for more!

– Akshay Baheti, Tata Memorial Hospital

PS: If you have suggestions on which articles to cover, do share them as comments or by emailing us at caferoentgen@gmail.com