There is considerable common ground between radiology and engineering. The imaging equipment radiologists use each day was designed and is maintained by engineers. Innovation in radiology, such as the development of a new magnetic resonance imaging pulse sequence or a new modality such as positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging, requires close collaboration between radiologists and engineers. In fact, with a few notable exceptions such as Godfrey Hounsfield, engineers are frequently the unsung heroes of medical progress.
Yet there is more to be learned from the interface between radiology and engineering than merely where credit is due. Specifically, engineers are educated to adopt certain habits of mind that might be of benefit to any practicing radiologists. To be sure, few radiologists are interested in pursuing formal engineering degrees. But looking at health care broadly and medical care specifically through the eyes of an engineer can reveal important insights on how radiologists can better understand their work and improve their performance.
Many radiologists studied traditional undergraduate disciplines such as biology and chemistry, fields that emphasize memorization. Such students often find medical school a natural extension of their prior training. They spend 4 years in college memorizing facts, and medical school often simply requires them to shift this approach to learning into a higher gear, committing to memory more facts at a higher rate of speed than ever before.
The transition to medical school is often more challenging for an engineering graduate, who is less comfortable with wholesale memorization and more accustomed to problem-solving. A biology or chemistry student has been taught to remember what the textbook or instructor said. An engineering student has been trained to experiment with different possible approaches to a problem. Merely providing the correct answer is insufficient for engineering courses: learners must be capable of explaining their approach. Traditional premedical students tend to focus on retaining what others already know, whereas the engineer is being educated to solve novel problems.
Of course, to draw the contrast in this way represents something of an overgeneralization. As undergraduate students of biology and chemistry reach higher level courses, they may spend more time and energy on the fields’ new horizons. Moreover, the laboratory portions of such courses tend to emphasize experimentation, and many students may become involved in research as undergraduates. Nevertheless, the generalization still holds that engineering students tend to be more focused on problem-solving.
This provides people who think like engineers a potential advantage. Because they are problem solvers, they are willing to look at a question from multiple points of view, consider various possible solutions, and tolerate the possibility of error in an iterative approach to a challenge. Many biology and chemistry students tend to assume that there is always one right answer. Although this may be true on standardized tests, it is frequently a mistake in clinical settings. Real-world problems often have multiple possible solutions, which must be weighed on their efficacy, efficiency, and costs to society and the patient.
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