Precise interpretation and presentation of abdominal (AXR) and chest radiographs (CXR) are essential skills required to ensure optimal management and outcomes for patients. They are skills that a junior doctor is expected to have basic competency in and which are essential for on call situations, referrals and for professional examinations. Whilst radiograph interpretation is often taught by lectures, presentation and focused teaching on these skills is often only taught anecdotally on the wards. Through facilitated small group workshops, delivered at an early stage of medical students’ training, we aimed to provide a framework for AXR and CXR interpretation and presentation. We designed this study to estimate the efficacy of these total participation workshops in improving radiograph interpretation skills and presentation confidence.

We included 77 third year medical student volunteers who attended a rotation at a tertiary London teaching hospital from January to April 2013. All students underwent a total participation workshop on CXR (n=39) or AXR (n=38), which included teaching a framework for interpretation and presentation followed by practicing these skills in a small group of 4-6 with a facilitator giving active feedback. Radiograph interpretation skills were tested using multiple choice questions (MCQs) before and after the workshop. Students also scored their confidence and effectiveness of their presentation and their overall personal confidence on a scale of 0-10. Those scoring their personal confidence from 0-5 were grouped as low or non-confident and those scoring from 6-10 as confident.

We would like to thank King's College London and King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust for their support of the Denmark Hill Campus Teaching Group.