Way before a disease gets treated, it must be diagnosed properly. If the diagnosis of the disease neither is nor right, the treatment would get a misleading signal, which will induce further harmful impacts on the patient. Hence, ensuring the right diagnostic is the first step towards ensuring the right treatment of any disease.

There are plenty of diseases that do not have any primary signs and symptoms and can only be traced with the help of the process of medical imaging, formally known as radiology. To understand the condition of the organs and their functioning radiology, the one technique that can help the doctors to a great extent. Also, the patients get benefitted by the details physiological data provided through radiology.

Hence, radiology has become one of the primary pillars of the medical domain at present, and the same needs to be impeccable for the best quality health care services.  But, human errors are common to this practice. Surely, an error in such a delicate diagnostic process may lead to fatal impacts on the health care services imparted to the patients. However, there are certain rules and protocols associated with such body imaging processes laid by competent authorities which must be followed to secure the privacy of the information of the patient.

According to past records, the market has several examples of incidences, where malpractice of radiological practices can be spotted. Though absolute eradication of such unfair acts cannot be guaranteed, the following top five tips can be followed to keep the chance of any such malpractice at its minimum.

Compassion

The doctor-patient relationship can play critical in maintaining an empathetic relationship between the two parties. This helps the doctors to stay within the norms and standards and maintain transparency with the patients. Also, the patients lay their faith in the doctor and agree upon negotiations and amicable settlements if any unintended error gets detected during the process of radiology.

The problem with this approach is that most of the time, the patients do not come in contact with the doctors and hence the relationship ceases to exist. It is only during the processes like mammography or procedural subspecialties that the patient comes in contact with the doctors. However, compassion can be a way out of this problem of malpractice risk.

Competence

Competence issues refer to the situations where a radiologist might need to read the studies of a case which is not his/her forte. Radiology is a vast area of knowledge, and the radiologists have their individual area of expertise. Sometimes owing to the unavailability of sub-specialist radiologists, substitution radiologists are asked to do the reading on behalf of the expert which leads to guessing the conclusion on many occasions.

Hence, the reports submitted turns out to be inadequate or incorrect on many occasions. If a radiologist sticks to the domain of specialization, this problem of misleading predictions and suggestions can be avoided to a large extent.

Care

Based on the images taken by the machines, the radiologist prepares a report where the detection of the required physiological detailing gets stated. While typing the report, if enough care is not taken, the report might have typing errors, and sometimes the absence of one word or one additional word can make the meaning of the diagnosis completely different.

Hence, every report, once it is ready, must be proofread to ensure its accuracy. The recommended standards of report care suggest that the radiologists must take special care while making the report and must conduct a thorough check before submitting the same.

Communication

Cases of insufficient communications are common in the field of malpractices related to radiology. If the radiologist fails to provide any concrete evidence in support of the same, the consequences will not be in favor of him. However, when dealing with a patient, a radiologist must keep the track record of all the communication through documents. Also, the radiologist must maintain timely and adequate communication with the patients in case of any serious findings. This can help curtail the malpractice in radiology.

Clarity Of Documents

This final stage of the check is all about ensuring the right handling of the above four efforts. Proper documents in support of compassion, competence, care, and communication can often turn a case in favor of the radiologist. More than what happened; the jury depends on what can be proved through valid documents if any case gets reported. Hence, clear and proper documentation is the primary part of radiology to keep the practice out of any contaminations.

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