Material and methods
Basic level of education is thus organized into two different sublevels. First one involves residents who will become mainly referrers in the 1st year of residency, and the second one is intended for the same trainees during 3rd to 5th year of the training programme. Excluded from this tuition are just specialists in training whose specialities include advanced education on radiation protection: radiation oncology, nuclear medicine and radiology.
The basic level of education aimed at residents in their 1st year of residency is developed in a one day course with a length of six hours in just one session.
This course encompasses ionizing radiation fundamentals such as structure of matter, radiation quantities and units, X-ray generation, radiation detection, the x-ray tube, x-ray equipment and image formation. These fundamentals are followed by one lesson of biological effects of ionizing radiation and another one of Radiation Protection principles and legislation. Maybe the most important lesson for referrers is the one which focuses on the description of the different procedures and equipment available at the hospital, with a brief notion about the dose received by patients.
After the lessons, the participants have to accomplish and pass an evaluation test to obtain the certificate.
The second basic course aimed to residents in their 3rd to 5th years of their programme is organised in two parts: a three-hour course, enhancing the training practical aspects of radiology, and a practical exercise, to fulfil during the next month.
Contents of this part are more practical and maybe more useful for residents in their daily clinical practice, focusing mainly on referral criteria for radiological procedures, with practical examples. Special attention is placed on operational radiation protection for different practises, and also on patient radiation protection.
At the end of both curses, a satisfaction questionnaire developed by the Regional Council is provided to the trainees following the final evaluation, so as to evaluate their level of fulfilment regarding explanations of the teacher, contents and applications, documentation supplied and organization of the course. In addition, a section of suggestions and observations was included where any improvement or modification could be remarked. Each item of the satisfaction questionnaire was marked between 0 and 10. Special interest had items such as “Utility for your job”, “Degree of knowledge acquired”, or “Global assessment of the course”.
Results
Based on the satisfaction questionnaires of former editions, especially on comments and suggestions of participants, some changes in the contents and their complexity have been performed, as to adequate them to the previous knowledge and interests of students, and to improve those aspects which are more requested, usually practical examples.
The second basic course is usually better appreciated and evaluated, apart from the last edition, for they find it more useful for daily practice. Tables 1 and 2 show the evaluation for both courses along the years.
On both courses, what they rate best are the practical contents, especially on the second course, containing a complete lesson of practical examples on justification of radiological procedures.
As suggestions and comments, they always remark the necessity to introduce practical sessions, which is really difficult to accomplish with about 100 attendants in each edition.
The objective, though, every year is to reach at least a 6 up to 10 mark, which has been attained in every edition. In fact, the second course has always been rated above 7.
The evaluation test performed after the first course has been always passed by every student, while the practical exercise proposed after the second course has to be repeated by about 5% of the participants.