For Breast Screening Professionals
A key issue for radiologists, advanced practitioners, technologists and other health professionals who inspect and interpret screening mammograms is how to improve and maintain their image interpretation skills. One way to do this is to participate in a regular educational self-assessment scheme (PERFORMStm – PERsonal perFORmance in Mammographic Screening) where they are annually presented with a number of recent screening mammograms which demonstrate a range of difficult normal, benign and malignant mammographic appearances.
They inspect and report on each case, receive immediate feedback on how well they have performed on the set of cases as well as detailed information on their performance in judging whether a case is normal, benign or malignant ( as judged against known case pathology) and also whether a case should be recalled for further investigation or not, as judged by the radiological appearance of that case ( as judged against an expert radiological panel decision on the radiological appearance of each case) as some abnormal cases can appear normal and vice versa. Furthermore once all UK personnel have taken part then they receive anonymous and detailed feedback of how well they have performed on the scheme in comparison to all their UK peers. Every year a new set of cases are derived and circulated for inspection thus enabling every participant to receive ongoing education through this self assessment and training scheme.
