Researchers Felicity Pool, MBChB and Stacy Goergen, MBBS have conducted a review of literature on what makes a high quality written radiology report. The result: Existing guidelines need consistency and improvement.
The paper, published in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR), titled “Quality of the Written Radiology Report: A Review of the Literature” looked at various authoritative sources that offered guidelines relating to the written radiology report.
After applying a selection methodology that included PubMed search criteria, twenty-five published papers and 4 guidelines were eventually reviewed and evaluated.
The researchers concluded, “Existing guidelines have a number of weaknesses with regard to scope and purpose, methods of development, stakeholder consultation, and editorial independence and applicability. There is a major gap in published studies relating to testing of interventions to improve report quality using conventional randomized controlled trial methods.”
The researchers further found a wide variation in the language used to describe imaging findings and diagnostic certainty.
The full study is available on the JACR’s website.
(Source: Abstract)
