Imaging Doctors Must Communicate to Be Effective

The primary trait that you probably want your preventive imaging doctor to have is skill. You need a doctor who is familiar with the kind of work that you are seeking to have done in order to identify, prevent and treat disease in your body. Beyond that, your next favorite trait might be something along the line of patience, kindness or being easy to talk to. After all, you want a doctor who is going to be able to make you feel safe and comfortable as you get your screening taken care of each year. However, a new study indicates that the most important trait for imaging and preventive health doctors to have might be communication. And that's not just communication with you as a patient. It's communication with the other doctors and staff in the radiology departments where they work. Essentially, it boils down to the importance of everybody in the process of treatment doing their jobs well and conveying that information to the others throughout the process. For example, the doctor who first orders the screening needs to know what type of procedure should be done and what to look for. That information must be passed along to the technicians who are going to be doing the actual screening process. Likewise, the information gleaned there must be effectively communicated back to the imaging doctor in order to make sure that the most beneficial treatments are performed. Preventive health care is all about nipping problems in the bud. We all know that problems are resolved more quickly when communication is open and complete. It makes sense then that this type of communication is of utmost important in the imaging field. Question of the Day: Why do you feel that communication is key to an imaging department's success? photo link