How to Reach Gold Standards in Radiology Through Continuous Learning & Education - Affidea

Rapid developments in radiology and technological advances offer unique educational opportunities that can set the clinical standards for better patient outcomes. Affidea is committed to providing clinical teams with the necessary education and tools to lead the future of radiology.

Key Points

Radiology is the core business of Affidea and the medical specialty, probably most sensitive to the ever-evolving nature of medicine. This is, in great part, related to the new technologies and methodologies used in radiology, and it is unquestionably important to keep updated on the most recent developments.

Radiology has a pivotal and decisive role in patient management. Clinicians rely on our diagnostic performance to make the most effective treatment decisions and achieve the best patient outcomes. By supporting education, Affidea empowers its clinical community with the necessary skills in the long run; a strong professional development plan that turns into a triple-win: for patients, doctors and the company.

In the last studies dedicated to healthcare management, including the one led by Healthmanagement.org, CEOs from the healthcare sector considered the availability of skilled staff to be one of their five top concerns. Continuous medical education is an absolute need and not just a nice-to-have. It is the only way to provide safe, effective, and high-quality, specialised patient care.

Inward and Outward Benefits of Continuous Medical Education

Inward benefits reflect upon expanding knowledge and skills in sub-specialty areas, updating and uniforming standards of clinical procedures, replicating best practices and innovative projects across centres, and supporting clinical talent recruitment and retention processes.

The outward benefits include our strong reputation of clinical excellence and strengthened relationships with referrals and patients, health sector third parties and key opinion leaders (KOLs).

Affidea has committed to building up a consistent clinical team organised by subspecialty groups and a strong network of medical directors across 15 countries, with excellence-driven and educational-conscious experts and researchers and close connections with the most relevant scientific societies who are willing to share their expertise.

Sapere aude As Our Clinical Motto

This is to say that the investment in continuous professional development is Affidea’s hallmark. For this, Affidea relies on a team fully dedicated to scientific education to set a consistent medical education programme tailored to our healthcare professionals’ needs, preparing them for the road ahead.

The Affidea Academy was the starting point for all educational projects, and we are proud to say it has been progressively expanding.

The rationale is the never-ending need to upgrade scientific knowledge, which is the essence of excellence in clinical performance. Specifically, the project focuses on:

• establishing a virtual clinical onboarding, as well as professional development programmes;
• further developing subspecialty-related content to drive DI & Clinical Service Excellence;
• implementing and promoting the Affidea Clinical Academy and Clinical Knowledge Hub as in-house learning solutions;
• designing & delivering a series of scientific events for internal and external audiences to focus on new screening programmes, modalities and innovative products to support growth.

We believe that a communication-centred approach between the Education & Learning Team and the Clinical Community is a key to success.

Profiling the Clinical Needs for Tailor-Made Education

Progress comes through active listening to the needs of our doctors and through close communication. With this in mind, we profiled our clinical team through targeted surveys which provided us deep insight into their clinical needs and expectations while keeping an open channel of communication. Other factors have been considered, such as the specifics of each centre, epidemiologic data and technological solutions, with a special focus on opportunities for improvement and the most recent innovations. This is how we managed to build a tailor-made educational agenda that meets the needs of our clinical team and responds to the current challenges.

Different formats of educational events, such as webinars, hot topics, courses, and conferences, both live and on-demand, are provided.

The recently created Affidea Knowledge Hub, a digital environment that includes all clinical resources, is another valuable asset expected to prompt access to all scientific content developed by Affidea.

The educational plan at Affidea includes local and corporate initiatives, with preference given to multidisciplinary meetings, where radiologists and clinicians can learn together about a specific topic in their area of expertise, including radiotherapy, at 360º. All these projects have the added value of enhancing and standardising best practices and thus raising the bar under the scope of reaching gold clinical standards in all Affidea countries.

The feedback is highly rewarding. Following our most recent scientific events, we have achieved an NPS of 75%, and 95% of the participants mentioned that the learning from the courses provided would be included in their daily clinical practices.

Affidea has a strong legacy in partnering with national and European Scientific Societies, with regular participation in national and European-wide conferences. The most recent and outstanding achievement is the example of the Affidea Hungary Team, which has been accredited to become a training centre for specialists in a state-funded framework, strong evidence of the quality of the centres and the trust that doctors and national authorities offer them.

In conclusion, the rapid developments in radiology and the new advances in technology provide us with unique educational opportunities which are meant to set the clinical standards for better patient outcomes. It is up to us to provide our clinical teams with the necessary education and tools to lead the future of radiology with clinical excellence at the core. 

Disclosure of conflict of interest: Point-of-View articles are the sole opinion of the author(s) and they are part of the HealthManagement.org Corporate Engagement or Educational Community Programme.