Baylor University Medical Center

Diagnostic Radiology Residency Program

 

Facilities

 

Baylor University Medical Center is a private teaching hospital that serves as the major quaternary referral center for all of North Texas.  Approximately 383,000 radiographic examinations are performed at the hospital each year.

 

Hospital Facts (Fiscal Year 2011)

 

• 38,951 admissions (including newborns)
• 4,703 babies born
• 85,374 emergency room visits
• 216,794 outpatient visits (excluding emergency department)
• 1,065 licensed beds
• 1,012 physicians
• 220 medical residents and fellows
• 5,500 employees

 

U.S. News & World Report "America's Best Hospitals" guide has been consistently recognizing Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas as one of the best hospitals in the nation since 1993.

 

An agreement of intent to merge the governance of Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas with Scott & White Healthcare in Temple, Texas was signed on December 14, 2012 by both boards.  Scott & White Healthcare, like Baylor, is a not-for-profit organization with a history of innovation and a reputation for excellence. In addition, our organizations share very similar visions, missions and values.  Combining the strengths of these two health systems would create a $7.7 billion organization. If the partnership is approved and plans move forward, the new system would be named Baylor Scott & White Health. The resources would include the organizations’ combined 42 hospitals, more than 350 patient care sites, more than 4,000 active physicians, 34,000 employees and the Scott & White Health Plan. The partnership could be among the largest not-for-profit health system in Texas and one of the largest in the United States. 

 

 

Curriculum

 

Our radiology residency program is a combination of five 5-year categorical positions that span postgraduate years 1-5 and two advanced positions that span postgraduate years 2-5. The latter two spots require the matched applicant to also match for an internship or transitional year for postgraduate year one.  For the categorical 5-year residents, the clinical internship is automatically acquired at Baylor during PGY-1. This year is a modified internal medicine preliminary year.

 

Clinical training in the department of radiology at Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) provides progressive supervised responsibility for patient care and ensures that residents perform procedures commonly accepted in all aspects of clinical diagnostic radiology. Our residents rotate through all the subspecialties in radiology and are evaluated at the end of each rotation.

 

 

Rotations

 

Four months of nuclear radiology and three months of mammography are required, but time in the department is otherwise evenly divided among the other subspecialties. There are six months of elective time during the final year of residency, during which residents gain additional experience in their subspecialty areas of interest.

 

This table shows the number of 4-week blocks that residents typically spend in each subspecialty area during the 4 years of residency training.

 

 

Table: CT = computed tomography, GI = gastrointestinal, GU = genitourinary, MRI = magnetic resonance Imaging, Rad-path = radiology pathology, AIRP = American Institute for Radiologic Pathology, US = Ultrasound

 

 

All applicants who successfully match for the categorical tract with us through the NRMP system are automatically matched to a preliminary internal medicine clinical year here at Baylor. This provides the opportunity to rotate within the Radiology Department for two four-week blocks during the clinical intern year. Below is a breakdown of the typical clinical year.

 

 

 

The elective time spent in radiology allows the resident to begin formal radiology training in their first postgraduate year.  This “built-in” intern year will allow applicants to move only one time for post-graduate training, become acquainted with our hospital’s physicians and processes and their own future classmates, and obtain an excellent clinical preparation for radiology.  Finally, by beginning radiology in their first post-graduate year, the residents will not only become assimilated into our department earlier, but also they will be awarded more elective time at the end of their radiology training.  This added elective time will allow each resident to “tailor-make” a portion of their training to their individual needs/interests. 

 

Postgraduate year 2 is spent entirely at the sponsoring institution of Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. For postgraduate years 4-5 a small portion of the training for Pediatric Radiology, Musculoskeletal Radiology, and Radiologic-Pathologic correlation at the American Institute for Radiologic Pathology (AIRP) course do take the resident away from the sponsoring institution.

 

Postgraduate year 3 or 4 will take the resident to Children's Medical Center at Dallas (affiliate of University of Texas Southwestern Medical School radiology training program) for rotations in pediatric radiology. This excellent pediatric rotation is under the guidance of the director of pediatric radiology, Dr. Nancy Rollins, with Dr. Michael Morriss serving as the educational director.

 

In postgraduate year 4 and year 5 the resident has the opportunity to complete outstanding musculoskeletal radiology training rotating at the Carrell Memorial Clinic in Dallas.

 

All of our residents are given the opportunity during the postgraduate year 4 to attend the four week American Institute for Radiologic Pathology (AIRP) course which is now a program of the American College of Radiology (ACR) and continues the training formerly held at the Armed Forces Institute in Pathology.

 

Residents are appointed to our residency as described in the section “How to Apply / Appointment of Housestaff-Eligibility”. We currently are approved for 28 residents and we match for 7 residents a year. Five of the residents are categorical residents who automatically perform their internship at Baylor, and two are advanced residents who need to match for an internship at another institution or with another program at Baylor. We have a medium size residency training program, which we believe is large enough to absorb the impact of night and weekend responsibilities, but small enough to provide the one-on-one individual attention that we like to afford each resident in our training program. Our department performs around 475,000 exams per year, and radiology residents participate in a large percentage of these cases. This results in an exceptional exposure to both a high quality and quantity of material from which to learn. Our patient population has an excellent balance of tertiary referral, private insurance, indigent care, and transplant-related services. Our diversity of patients, collegiality between subspecialties, and quality teaching set our residency apart from many others.

 

Our program has developed a twice monthly "Professionalism in Radiology / Systems Based Practice" lecture series. The purpose of this lecture series is to identify the non-clinical professional development needs of the BUMC radiology residents and create relevant educational offerings so that participants will gain the knowledge and skills necessary to demonstrate the level of professionalism and leadership required for effective performance in today's practice settings. The lecture team consists of physicians, attorneys, Certified Public Accountants (CPA), Certified Financial Planners (CFP), insurance agents, medical coding experts, and others that are associated with the radiology group. This is a unique aspect of our training program, and the most advanced professionalism non-interpretive lecture curriculum in the country. We hope that this assists our residents in making a seamless transition into a career in the world of clinical or academic medicine.

 

 

Duties and Responsibilities

 

In general, residents are expected to be in the department and available to see patients no later than 7:30 a.m. each morning. Residents usually leave the department between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m., and it is a priority that they have sufficient study time for independent reading in the evenings.

Some rotations require that residents arrive early or stay late, and residents are encouraged to participate in each rotation in a way that meets the subspecialty’s needs. The program director will always ensure that rotation responsibilities do not detract from residents’ overall educational experience.

 

 

Night Float

 

On-call responsibilities are currently satisfied through 4 week ER night float rotations. Two residents are assigned to the rotation at any time, and they alternate—6 days on and 6 days off. Although residents are not able to attend noon conference during this time, this arrangement provides the least disruptive schedule.

 

• The five applicants per year who match to the categorical program participate in night float with the internal medicine department during internship.
• Radiology residents do not participate in the night float rotations until they have had at least 12 months of radiology rotations.
• During the four year residency, residents can expect to perform about eight months of ER night float rotations.
• For the graduating class of 2014 and beyond there will be a break from ER night float prior to the new American Board of Radiology Core Examination administered 36 months into their residency.

 

 

Daily Educational Conferences

 

Educational conferences are held daily from 12 noon to 1 pm. Additional educational conferences start at 7 am about 3 times a week.

Most conferences are held in our dedicated Radiology Resident Classroom which is equipped with a new DLP projector.

Multiple interdisciplinary conferences are held each month in which residents are expected to participate. These include, but are not limited to, Bone and Soft Tissue Tumor Conference, Breast Tumor Conference, Chest Tumor Conference, and GI Tumor Conference, Head & Neck Oncology, Neuro Oncology, Skull Base Oncology, Liver Oncology.

The Radiology Department and the Pathology Department hold a joint proven case conference every other month.

 

 

Library Resources

 

• The Vivian P. Baldwin Library is our Radiology Department Library. It is updated yearly and contains journals, textbooks, and other resource materials, such as DVDs and CD ROMs.  Residents can access the library 24 hours a day.
• The Baylor Health Sciences Library is located on campus and available for more intensive research.  It provides many popular resources including online access to many electronic journals, electronic books and electronic databases.
• Access to Statdx and RADPrimer is provided to the radiology residents.

 

 

Conferences & Research Opportunities

 

The radiology faculty is committed to fostering an environment of intellectual curiosity and scholarly endeavors such as clinical research. A resident research fund provides radiology residents financial support to perform and present clinical research. Radiology residents are required to complete at least one scholarly activity project under staff supervision during their residency training period. This experience must be documented in the resident's learning portfolio.

 

If the resident’s research project is accepted for presentation at a major radiology meeting, the radiology research fund will cover reasonable expenses, and time to attend will be granted after coordination with and approval by the program director. Each resident may make only one meeting presentation for any one research project.

 

Many opportunities exist for scholarly activities, including multidisciplinary, intra, or interdepartmental conferences, as well as case report presentations and involvement in departmental continuous quality improvement teams.

 

Our residents have made presentations at many national radiology conferences including:

 

• RSNA, Radiological Society of North America
• ARRS, American Roentgen Ray Society
• ASSR, American Society of Spine Radiology
• ASHNR, American Society of Head and Neck Radiology
• ASNR, American Society of Neuroradiology
• SIR, Society of Interventional Radiology
• WCIO, World Congress on Interventional Oncology
• AUR, Association of University Radiologists