Nowadays, the design of radiology requisition forms in most medical centers includes headings where the clinician can provide clinical information and a clinical question.The latter seems obvious: radiologists cannot answer questions that have not been asked. As for clinical information, depriving a radiologist of information that could help to interpret the results of an examination in a more coherent and efficient way may hamper the diagnostic process and therefore reduce the quality of patient care. Moreover, several authors have shown that in specific situations, the...

We performed a large scale survey among hospital specialists and general practitioners in The Netherlands and Belgium. Using internet based survey software, we developed a questionnaire consisting of 46 questions pertaining to the radiology report. Each question consisted of a proposition with which the respondent could indicate his/her level of agreement according to a Likert scale (totally disagree, partially disagree, neutral, partially agree, totally agree).The propositions pertaining to the availability of clinical information and a clinical question, were the following:In order to make a good...

We received complete electronic responses from 453 specialists response rate 17.7%) and 282 general practitioners (response rate 21.3%). The total response rate was 18.9%. Age and gender distribution of the responders were in accordance with the distribution of these parameters in the medical community. 60.8 % of the specialists and 62.1 % of the general practitioners were male. The mean age of the specialists was 42.0 years (minimum 25 yrs, maximum 70 yrs, median 41 yrs, SD 11.7 yrs). The mean age of the general...

The conviction that the radiologist better does not know too much about the patient was shared by only a very small portion of the responders. Despite the modest response rate of 18.9 %, the gender and age distribution of the responders give us reason to believe that our results are in accordance with mainstream thinking within the medical community.

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