IMSc 2018 Aldo - Radiology registrar / resident - year 2

Aldo, a Radiology Registrar / Resident, is enrolled on the Edinburgh Imaging Academy Imaging MSc & hopes to use knowledge gained from our programme to underpin a career in research Radiology. He discusses the knowledge he has gained, and the courses he studied in his second year of study.

 

Transcript - IMSc 2018 Aldo - Radiology registrar / resident - year 2

"Well my name is Aldo Vasquez, I am a radiology resident at Mexico City, and I started this programme 2 years ago.

I decided to be in this programme because I am doing radiology, and I think we need a better research background.

Well normally we are in a clinical environment and we only use our imaging techniques for diagnosing, and everyone is interested in research, but nobody does proper research. We only see some cases and we can make some case reports, some reviews about the subject, but we cannot do a proper clinical trial, and it is very difficult to get a clinical trial approved by an ethics committee, so the good thing about the programme is we get a lot of information about how to do a clinical trial properly, how to do research properly, and that helps us to have a more scientific background.

Well now that I have more experience in radiology I think it’s very interesting what we can get in this programme, because one year ago I was very new in radiology so I only had some theoretical information, now, I have to take care of patients and I have to interpret many studies. Now that I have more scientific information, I think that I can understand things a little bit more, and I have much better ideas for research.

Well first of all, I can understand the other techniques a little bit more than my other peers. I can, for example, when somebody tells me “okay let’s do a scientific project”, I can see if that has a future or not, and if it’s worth doing. And for example, many people just want to do some research but they don’t have the basic knowledge to do it, and when you are in this programme you have all the basic information just to do a proper research project.

Well in the first semester I did neuro anatomy/anatomy and statistics, and statistics those are difficult, but the good thing is they teach you which statistical methods you should use in imaging, it’s not the same as clinical research. For anatomy and neuro anatomy, well of course if you are doing radiology it is going to very helpful, you can get some basic anatomy information and also you see anatomical variants, if you are working at a hospital it’s worth it, because you are seeing for example, CT scans, MRI scans every day, so if you are studying the anatomy and neuro anatomy courses then it is going to be very helpful.

Right now I am taking the cardiovascular imaging, study design and translational imaging courses. Cardiovascular imaging, well it’s very interesting because normally, speaking about Mexico, we do too much imaging about the abdomen, the thorax, but we don’t focus very much on cardiovascular, and with this course I got more knowledge about new imaging methods for example, MRI scans, calcium scoring, also anatomical variants, and I think that’s a very good course, it’s very nice to see all kinds of information about cardiovascular imaging. And then I did translational imaging, and that’s a very interesting course because it’s the bridge between experimental and clinical imaging, so how are you going to translate one study about mice and rats, into a clinical environment?, and I think it’s very helpful. And study design I think that’s the most important one about this semester, because now we have all the information how are we going to do proper research?, how are we going to convince an ethics committee to approve our projects?, and I think it’s a very useful one.

Well I would like to work in a great imaging company, for example Siemens or GE, as an advisor because they have many engineers for example, who could advise them how to make their products, but I think with our programme we have another perspective, for example the clinical perspective, so we could advise company if their products are worthwhile, if they’re investing in something that is worth it, and while doing radiology and while doing this programme as well, I think I could do that and I would really like to work in that kind of company.

I think even if you are in an online distance programme you should contact your peers. You can learn a lot from them, many of them have very different backgrounds, and you should apply what you read in your lectures, to your daily work.

- IMSc 2018 Aldo - Radiology registrar / resident - year 2

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