iRADiX

The editorial titled “The 'why' of Radiology and related issues" in the August 2008 issue of The Indian Journal of Radiology and Imaging by Dr. Bhavin Jankharia makes an interesting reading. I couldn't agree more with Dr. Bhavin. This should be the ideal. But the ideals are hardly ever met. At the start of my practice I have received cigarette pack paper on the back of which "Chandrawati, X-Ray chest PA" is written by the referring doctor, the age and sex is 'allotted' by our technician. Immediately after the X-Ray exposure the patient goes back to the referring clinician to wait there and an attendant or some distant relative, who is usually unaware of the type of patient's illness, comes to collect the report. We usually have good rapport with just a couple of clinicians out of a hundred and of those rarely one or two are readily available to give information about the referred patient. More over he may not remember about which patient we are talking about. If the clinician himself accompanies the patient for investigation then our goal will be met but if he is an important one then other patient's displeasure is audible. We have to write the report without having any information about the patients illness like teleradiologists.