Adrian Brady

The evolution of modern radiology into a central role in patient care seems like a good development for radiologists: we’ve spent years demonstrating the clinical impact of our skills, and have moved from being peripheral to day-to-day clinical decision making to being central participants in multidiscipinary care.

However, this success has brought challenges. We’re now expected to provide 24/7 hyper-efficient services, with reports of complex studies often expected within minutes. In some instances, radiologists have become the primary diagnostic decision makers. This would be welcome if our capacity to cope with increasing utilisation had evolved with these demands. However, frequently, workforce availability lags substantially behind workload requirements, and this gap is widening. As a result, we can often feel like hamsters on a wheel, running faster and faster to keep up. This pressure, paradoxically, can diminish our capacity to contribute clinically, and risks forcing radiologists back into a remote role, sitting in front of workstations churning out reports, losing our direct contact with patients and referring colleagues.

Constant pressure to deal with excessive workload can lead to exhaustion, burnout and increasing flight from practice. This can be compounded by uncertainties about our future role, apparently-threatening technological developments (including AI), and changing expectations of what an appropriate work life should look like.

In this talk, I’ll review some of these apparently-negative aspects of the life of the modern radiologist, and consider possible mitigations and developments which may improve our lot (and our satisfaction with it) in the future.