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Towards better metainterpretation: improving the clinician’s interpretation of the radiology report

  • Kevin M. Johnson EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 20, 2020
Diagnosis
From the journal Diagnosis Volume 8 Issue 3

Abstract

How the clinician interprets the radiology report has a major impact on the patient’s care. It is a crucial cognitive task, and can also be a significant source of error. Because the clinician must secondarily interpret the radiologist’s interpretation of the images, this step can be referred to as a “metainterpretation”. Some considerations for that task are offered from the perspective of a radiologist. A revival of the tradition of discussing cases with the radiologist is encouraged.

Keywords: diagnostic error; incidental findings; physician communication; radiology
Corresponding author: Kevin M. Johnson, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Yale School of Medicine Thompkins, East 2 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA, Phone: 203 430 9798, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge helpful discussions with Thilan Wijesekera, M.D.

  1. Research funding: None declared.

  2. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: Authors state no conflict of interest.

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Received: 2020-06-09
Accepted: 2020-06-17
Published Online: 2020-07-20
Published in Print: 2021-08-26

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.1515/dx-2020-0081
Keywords for this article
diagnostic error; incidental findings; physician communication; radiology

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Chest pain management and biomarkers: the lack of trust in cardiac troponins measurement
  4. Reviews
  5. Bringing the clinical laboratory into the strategy to advance diagnostic excellence
  6. Atrial fibrillation: is there a role for cardiac troponin?
  7. Opinion Papers
  8. Towards better metainterpretation: improving the clinician’s interpretation of the radiology report
  9. The challenges of diagnosing diabetes in childhood
  10. Guidelines and Recommendations
  11. Measuring patient experience of diagnostic care and acceptability of testing
  12. Original Articles
  13. Clinical assessment of the Roche SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test
  14. Delayed treatment of bacteremia during the COVID-19 pandemic
  15. Strengths and weaknesses in the diagnostic process of endometriosis from the patients’ perspective: a focus group study
  16. Identifying trigger concepts to screen emergency department visits for diagnostic errors
  17. Handshake antimicrobial stewardship as a model to recognize and prevent diagnostic errors
  18. Uncertain diagnoses in a children’s hospital: patient characteristics and outcomes
  19. The effects of rudeness, experience, and perspective-taking on challenging premature closure after pediatric ICU physicians receive hand-off with the wrong diagnosis: a randomized controlled simulation trial
  20. Resident-faculty overnight discrepancy rates as a function of number of consecutive nights during a week of night float
  21. CONUT: a tool to assess nutritional status. First application in a primary care population
  22. Is there a real need for sputum culture for community-acquired pneumonia diagnostics? Results from a retrospective study in Russia
  23. Differentiating solid breast masses: comparison of the diagnostic efficacy of shear wave elastography and magnetic resonance imaging
  24. Short Communication
  25. Chest pain management: use of troponins in internal medicine wards
  26. Case Report
  27. Learning from tragedy – The Jessica Barnett story: challenges in the diagnosis of long QT syndrome
  28. Letters to the Editor
  29. Usability of non-medicinal swabs for SARS-CoV-2 detection to circumvent supply shortages
  30. Medical decision making during the COVID-19 epidemic: an opportunity to think how we think
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