Society of breast imaging residency and fellowship training curriculum

A curriculum for resident education in breast imaging has recently been developed by the Society of Breast Imaging (SBI) in response to a request from the Curriculum Committee of the Association of Program Directors in Radiology. The curriculum is the result of several years of work on the part of the SBI Ad Hoc Committee on Breast Imaging Training and also incorporates suggestions made by SBI fellows. Residency curricula for several other branches of radiology, including pediatric radiology and musculoskeletal radiology, have already been published by their respective subspecialty societies. The breast imaging residency curriculum is intended to serve three purposes: First, to provide guidance to academic chairpersons, residency program directors, and academic section chiefs in developing, assessing, and improving their residency training programs. Second, to list for residents the topics they need to learn and the experience they should try to acquire during their residency. Third, to specify for practicing radiologists the material they need to know to remain up to date in the practice of screening, diagnostic, and interventional breast imaging. The curriculum contains extensive and detailed lists of key concepts that the resident is expected to know in 14 areas. The curriculum also makes recommendations about residency training including the types of interventional breast procedures that the resident should learn to perform, the number of mammography examinations he or she should interpret, the educational resources that should be available, and the length of time that should be spent on the breast imaging rotation. Although the curriculum recommends that the resident become familiar with several specific documents, such as the American College of Radiology (ACR) Mammography Quality Control Manual 3 and the ACR Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS), 2 the curriculum leaves the selection of other textbooks to the discretion of the resident and his or her mentors. The committee hopes that residents familiarize themselves with curriculum topics by means of many different learning resources. The curriculum should raise awareness of the full scope and complexity of material required for breast imaging. The committee hopes that the curriculum (1) influences residency program directors to allot a proportionate number of slots in their department lecture schedules to breast imaging conferences, (2) encourages breast imaging attendings to include curriculum topics in their conferences and discussions with residents, and (3) stimulates residents to devote more after-hours studying to breast imaging and also to observe and perform more interventional procedures under faculty guidance. In addition to developing a residency curriculum guide, the SBI Curriculum Committee also developed a curriculum guide for breast imaging fellowships. Breast imaging is a subspecialty with an expanded role in patient care that incorporates knowledge from such fields as anatomy, pathology, physics, technology, and epidemiology. Breast imaging has undergone enormous growth and change in recent years and these trends may be expected to continue in the future. As a result, the residency and fellowship curricula will likely require periodic updates.