Direct role in Patient Care?

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For all those that are currently practicing Radiology. Do you often feel like you're left behind the scenes and not able to directly help patients? Many have already mentioned that they don't miss patient-contact, however do you miss the attention/satisfaction of directly getting thanked by a patient after you've helped them? Do you see your career more as a passion or just a job?

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[hans19]

For all those that are currently practicing Radiology. Do you often feel like you're left behind the scenes and not able to directly help patients? Many have already mentioned that they don't miss patient-contact, however do you miss the attention/satisfaction of directly getting thanked by a patient after you've helped them? Do you see your career more as a passion or just a job?

Virtually no patient is discharged from the hospital without getting some sort of imaging examination during his/her stay. For better or worse radiology has become a proxy for the physical exam. We may be behind the scenes, there is no doubt radiology is an integral part of modern medicine. There are very few fields in medicine that don't rely on imaging to make diagnostic and treatment decisions.

I don't have to deal with non-compliant patients, patients with personality disorders (just other doctors with them). As a future interventionalist, I still have direct patient contact. A lot of times the IR patient is between a rock and a hard place (not a candidate for surgery or too unstable) and I know what I can offer benefits the patient (as well as the clinician). If you think you will need to have daily interaction with patients, then think twice about radiology. If you think you could do without it (which a lot of clinicians discover eventually-- but then they are so entrenched in their field, its too late to get out) then radiology could be the right field for you.

Is radiology a passion or just a job? It is a job which I happen to be passionate about. But I have many passions, my job (radiology) is just one of them. Thats the beauty of radiology. Though I work hard, I still have the time to pursue the other things I enjoy.

If there are fields in medicine more interesting and more rewarding than radiology- there aren't many.

 

[f_w]

Let's see.

Today, I sat down with 3 patients to go over the findings of their diagnostic mammograms, the likelihood of them dying a horrendous death and the options on how to biopsy the abnormalities we ran into. I also saw a young kid with dysphagia for a barium swallow and counseled a lady with postmenopausal bleeding about the fact that nothing on her ultrasound makes me think that she has endometrial ca (like her sister had...).

Do I know my patients from the cradle to the grave like my FP colleagues do ? Certainly not. Does that make me any less important in the medical decision making for those patients, I don't think so.

If patient care is what you thrive on and you like medical imaging, high technology and fancy doodads, consider rad-onc.

 

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Thanks for the posts guys... it's good to hear you do get some contact!!!