From the Chiefs
The 2008-2009 academic year has been another time of continued growth, educational evolution and social camaraderie from a resident’s perspective.
The training within our core rotations continues to flourish with the addition of multiple new faculty to our dedicated chest rotation (Carlos Jamis-Dow, MD and Rekha Cherian, MD) which is in its second year of existence under the guidance of Rickhesvar Mahraj, PM, MD In addition, come July 1st, we will have several new faculty members join our already outstanding neuroradiology staff.
As Penn State radiology residents, we now have the distinct privilege of being able to brag about working one-on-one with the recent recipient of the Society of Uroradiology Lifetime Achievement award, David S. Hartman, MD. Because of recent changes to the rotation schedule, Dr. Hartman is now able to personally show cases from his extensive teaching file to the fluoroscopy resident in between patients.
The number of residents presenting research projects at local and national meetings continues to grow at an impressive rate. Many residents, under the supervision of our faculty, have presented oral and electronic exhibits at major national meetings this past year including RSNA and ARRS. In addition several others have had their projects published within the major radiology journals. Many of these projects will be highlighted at a hospital-wide 2nd annual research day to be held in the spring 2009.
The faculty’s continued support for our program’s mission statement of educational excellence is again demonstrated as our residents continue to score high on the annual ACR national in-training examination. In addition our graduating residents continue to secure fellowships at top ranked academic institutions around the country.
Our daily lecture schedule has been revamped in recent times eliminating the 7:00 am conference slot and instead replacing it with two separate 45 minute lectures beginning at 11:30 am. The intended format is to have a didactic conference on a particular topic for the first lecture followed by a relevant case conference for the second lecture. Reaction to this change of format has been very positive amongst the residents. This structure change has allowed residents more opportunity to attend hospital-wide interdisciplinary conferences which are typically scheduled at 7:00 am. The daily conferences and senior board reviews are now being recorded by state of the art equipment in our conference room and later made available online for those unable to attend the conference.
This academic year introduced a new series of lectures entitled “The Business of Radiology” under the direct supervision of Michael Bruno, MD and Louis “Scott” Winner, MD. The intent of this lecture series is to introduce residents to the complex world of finance, contracts, law, insurance and investing of which so many of us have little prior exposure. Numerous guest lecturers have come to speak regarding contract negotiations, malpractice law, wills & trusts and entrepreneurship. This collection of lectures has gotten very high remarks from the residents as a whole.
The addition of paid hours at East Campus in the evenings to monitor for contrast reactions has been a big success amongst the residents. Since its inception last year, we have now added scheduled Saturday shifts which run typically from 7:00 am till 4:00 pm.
The morale within our group of residents has progressively increased since the creation of a social committee headed by Stephanie Coquia, MD (second year radiology) and Rebecca Roller, MD (first year radiology). Their role has been to organize and encourage resident participation in a number of different social activities ranging from periodic happy hours to local area music concerts. Stephanie has single handedly organized a t-shirt fundraiser which at the present time has sold nearly 100 shirts to fellow residents, faculty, technology staff and alumni. The proceeds from this fundraiser will be used to help sponsor future resident/alumni social activities such as the upcoming 3rd Annual Radiology Golf Tournament slated for Sunday, June 7th. Plans are currently in the works for residents and faculty to participate in the Harrisburg Marathon Relay for the second year in a row this coming fall.
This is a very exciting time to be part of the residency training here at Penn State Hershey. The endless efforts of our faculty for continued evolution and improvement of our training experience is quite evident in the academic success of our residents. In addition camaraderie continues to thrive with participation of both residents and faculty in our various social events. We as a group look forward to continuing this trend into the next academic year.
Regards,
Lucas and Nicholas
Chief Residents
Diagnostic Radiology
