Across most public hospitals in Australia, radiology registrars are heavily relied upon to report after-hours imaging studies. At South Australia Medical Imaging Flinders Medical Centre, the after-hours radiology service is provided by radiology registrars, with consultant radiologists reviewing the registrar reports the following day. This study evaluated the turn-around time, and the nature and frequency of discrepancies between after-hours registrar reports and the final consultant check. The results of this study were also compared to the results of two previous audits performed at this site...

Ethics approval was granted and a two-week sample in January 2022 of all after-hours plain radiographs, computed tomography and ultrasound reports were obtained retrospectively. Data collected from these reports included the time the scan was performed, the time of registrar report and details of any discrepancy (if any). Discrepancies were then classified as major, minor, clarification, teaching and typographical error. Major discrepancy: a finding that has the potential to change patient management in the time between the registrar report and consultant check. Minor discrepancy: a...

1131 studies were recorded in the 2-week after-hours period. Of these studies, 772 were plain radiographs, 368 were CT studies and 41 were ultrasound studies. 252 studies contained discrepancies (22.3%). There were 5 major (0.4%) discrepancies and 75 minor (6.6%) discrepancies. There was no statistically significant difference between the proportion of major or minor discrepancies when compared to the 2018 (p=0.828, p=0.210) and 2014 (p=0.452, p=0.584) studies. The mean time between completion of scan and registrar report was 1.1 hours (compared to 2.4 hours in...

As with the previous studies, we have assumed consultant reports to be the gold-standard. Compared to the 2014 and 2018 studies at our institution, there are no statistically significant changes to the major and minor discrepancy rates. The improvement in mean reporting time between 2014 and 2018 was attributed to the interval addition of an extra after-hours evening registrar[2]. With the same level of staffing, the mean reporting time has been maintained, if not improved. Four out of the five major discrepancies in reporting were...

Harty E, M. A. Discrepancies and time delay between radiology registrar report of after-hours imaging and report of the checking radiology consultant in a South Australian tertiary hospital. RANZCR ASM2016. Ang J, Agzarian M. Discrepancies and times between the radiology registrar report of after-hours plain radiographs, computed tomography (CT) scans and ultrasounds and the report of the checking radiology consultant in a South Australian tertiary public hospital: a follow up study. RANZCR ASM; 2019. Goh GS, Aberdein G, Chokka R, Yu X, Varma D. After-hours...