A study in Israel, with results recently presented at a large conference, shows that when radiologists had a real picture of the patient next to the film they were reading their performances improved. Personally, I am not buying it. For one, the study hasn't even been published. It just had the makings for a good story and that is why the newspapers picked it up. The reason it makes a good story is in its controversy. Is it implying that radiologists forget that the pictures they are looking at are of real people? Duh. The second problem is that the study is small and to infer too much from it would be unscientific. In my opinion, there needs to be a lot more evidence before we start changing how these doctors practice their craft. If we start getting head shots of patients to give to radiologists there could be more issues that arise. Would they look harder if the patient was hot? Would they discriminate against patients they don't like? Would a Glamour Shots studio open up in the hospital so that patients could look better for their x-ray? And what's next? Do we want pathologists looking at live patients? Shivers just went down my spine as I typed that. Do we want radiologists and pathologists actually meeting live patients, people? There was a reason they were drawn to dark rooms or hidden away in isolated labs, you know. Letting them out could be catastrophic and an put end to the world as we know it. The horror! The horror!
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