Measuring the Effects of Education in Detecting Lung Cancer on Chest Radiographs: Utilization of a New Assessment Tool

This study was designed to evaluate the effect of group and individualized educational lectures to accurately interpret chest radiographs of lung cancer patients and to introduce a new educational tool in evaluating skills for reading chest radiographs. Utilizing “hotspot” technology will be instrumental in measuring the effect of education in interpreting chest radiographs. There were 48 participants in the study. Chest radiographs of 100 lung cancer patients and 11 healthy patients taken at various time points were used for evaluation. Using “hotspot” technology, lesions on each radiograph were outlined. Values were taken at baseline, after which the group received lectures. Several days later, they underwent exam 2. Exam 3 was conducted after individualized lectures. A final exam was taken after the participants underwent individualized training within 2 months. Scores significantly improved after the individual lessons (p < 0.001). This improvement in performance decreased in the final examination. Statistically significant differences were observed between exam 2 vs. exam 3 and exam 3 vs. the final exam (p < 0.001, p < 0.001). Participants demonstrated more improvement in detecting lesions in abnormal chest radiographs than in identifying normal ones. Although there was significant improvement in detecting abnormal radiographs by the end of the study (p < 0.001), no improvement was observed in detecting normal ones. We measured lung cancer detection rate using a new “hotspot” detection tool for chest radiographs. With the proposed scoring system, this tool could be objectively used in evaluating the educational effects.