Diagnostic Radiology Residency

Rotations

PGY-2 is spent at Baylor University Medical Center.

For PGY-3-5, a short portion of the training takes place at other locations:

• Pediatric radiology rotations during PGY-3 or 4 are conducted at Children's Health Children's Medical Center Dallas (an affiliate of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School diagnostic radiology training program). The pediatric rotation is under the guidance of Nancy Rollins, MD, director of Pediatric Radiology, and Michael Morriss, MD, educational director.
• PGY-4 residents attend a four-week American Institute for Radiologic Pathology (AIRP) course, a program of the American College of Radiology (ACR). This continues the radiologic pathologic correlation training formerly conducted by the Armed Forces Institute in Pathology (AFIP). The AIRP course registration fee and a generous travel allotment are provided by the residency program.
• PGY-5 residents choose up to six months of electives during the final year of residency during which they gain additional experience in their subspecialty area(s) of interest.

Categorical track

All applicants who successfully match for the categorical track with Baylor University Medical Center through the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) system are automatically matched to a preliminary internal medicine clinical year at Baylor Dallas.

The preliminary intern year includes rotations on medicine wards, medical and cardiac intensive care units, medical subspecialty electives, night float as well as two months of elective time in the radiology department. The medicine intern year provides a comprehensive inpatient clinical experience with a diverse patient population and high volume of bedside procedures.

Advanced track

The advanced track residents will receive an introductory basic training rotation at the beginning of R1 to ease transition into the program.

Duties and responsibilities

Residents are expected to be available to see patients by 7:30 a.m. each morning. Residents usually leave the department by 5 p.m., and it is a priority they have sufficient study time for independent reading in the evenings.

Some rotations require residents arrive earlier or stay later, and they are encouraged to participate in each rotation in a way that meets the subspecialties' needs. The program director ensures rotation responsibilities do not detract from a resident’s overall educational experience.

Night float

Residents are assigned to night float only after completion of 12 months of radiology. On-call responsibilities are satisfied through our four-week emergency department night float rotations.

For any four-week rotation block a resident will work 14 of the 28 shifts, up to 7 consecutive nights in accordance with ACGME requirements.

The residents have the flexibility to coordinate the daily schedule plan amongst themselves.

Conferences

In addition to the daily teaching performed while interpreting examinations, performing procedures and providing consultation to clinicians, daily educational conferences provide education in general and subspecialty topics in radiology.

Most of these conferences are taught by faculty, but radiology fellows and upper-level residents occasionally provide instruction.

All residents are excused daily from their clinical responsibilities from noon to 1 p.m. to participate in the daily noon conference, a valuable form of radiology instruction and one of many ways residents are prepared for the boards and in-training examinations. Morning conferences are given several times each month.

Physics conferences

This weekly conference is taught by one of our physicists covering the material over the course of a year and repeated annually. Preparation for the written board exam is also a priority for these conferences.

Multidisciplinary conferences

Residents participate in a multitude of oncology multidisciplinary conferences where input from multiple subspecialties determines the optimal course of therapies for the patient. These include bone and soft tissue, breast, chest, endocrine, gastrointestinal, head and neck, CNS, pancreas, colorectal and liver tumor boards.

Joint-case conferences are also held with the Pathology Residency and Emergency Medicine programs.

Business of Radiology curriculum

This conference is held every other month and cover health care changes, healthcare economics, government relations and business development.

Visiting professorships

Both the annual Baldwin Lectureship series and the annual Sears Seminar lecture series bring in nationally acclaimed radiologists as guest speakers.

Early specialization in interventional radiology (ESIR)

Our residents have the opportunity to enter the ACGME-approved pathway of early specialization in interventional radiology (ESIR).

Our facility is a Level 1 Trauma Center, holds Comprehensive Stroke Certification status and is an internationally renowned destination for transplant care.

Highlights in case variety include:

• Interventional oncology procedures
  • Chemoembolization
  • Radioembolization
  • Radiofrequency ablations
  • Microwave ablations
• Urgent trauma interventions
• Neuro-interventional radiology procedures
  • Diagnostic cerebral angiography
  • Acute stroke intervention
  • Aneurysm coiling
  • Vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty
  • Vascular malformation therapies
• Full spectrum of transplant interventions
• Transplant hepatobiliary procedures
• Arterial and venous angiography/intervention procedures
• Venous access procedures
• Non-vascular intervention procedures
• CT, ultrasound and fluoro-guided biopsies

ESIR residents perform well over 500 procedures during the four years of residency.

Research

Residents are required to complete at least one scholarly activity and one quality improvement (QI) project under staff supervision during the residency. This experience must be documented in the resident’s learning portfolio. Many opportunities exist for scholarly activities, including multidisciplinary, intra or interdepartmental conferences, as well as case report presentations and involvement in intra or interdepartmental continuous quality improvement teams.

A resident research fund provides residents financial support to perform and present clinical research.

If a 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 attend only one meeting presentation for any one research project.

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

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

Many of our residents’ presentations have earned awards at these conferences, including:

• ISET Best Poster
• RSNA Cum Laude
• RSNA Excellence in Design
• RSNA Certificate of Merit
• ASHNR Third Place Winner

Other scholarly activity by our residents has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including:

• Journal of the American College of Radiology
• Neurographics
• Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology
• Journal of Neurointerventional Surgery
• Liver Transplant
• American Journal of Cardiology
• Neurocrit Care
• New England Journal of Medicine
• Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings

Awards

Our team won first place at the 2017 AUR Vydareny Imaging Interpretation Competition, marking the third time Baylor University Medical Center has won the competition. This feat only matched by two other programs out of more than 180 residency programs in the nation. Unique to this win is that this is the first time that a team has won back-to-back years in the history of the competition.

The competition features a challenging set of unknown images and trivia questions answered by teams from academic institutions across the country.