Keywords:
Interventional non-vascular, Management, CT, Ultrasound, Biopsy, Drainage, Education and training, Workforce
Authors:
K. Ahmad , E. Hoey, M. Djearaman, A. Ganeshan; Birmingham/UK
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-3567
Conclusion
The demand for IR services cannot be solely addressed by increasing current training positions.
However,
harnessing the existing capabilities of the radiology workforce ranging from consultants through to nursing and radiology staff can help to ease interventional workload and improve patient access to innovative procedures.
Training diagnostic radiologists in basic interventional procedures reduced inpatient waiting times by 2 days,
thereby improving the standard for inpatient care.
Furthermore,
weekend services saw an inverse shift in the proportion of diagnostic led and interventional led procedures,
in turn allowing greater resources for specialist and acute interventional services.
Interventional weekday procedures reduced by 17% due to the increased number of competent diagnostic clinicians.
Ultimately this training structure may be transferrable to other trusts struggling to meet interventional demands,
alongside the adoption of established national initiatives to train allied professionals and increase training posts [1].
Our study was limited due to the limited comparable data,
its retrospective design and single centre sample size.