How big is the importance of talent in radiology?

Hey,

introduction

so I was thinking today about the role of talent vs craftmanship and knowledge in various professions. By talent I mean the born and acquired in early development biology traits, like intelligence or ability to evaluate decisions quickly.

Those are not of course fixed throughout our lifetimes, but we can't escape that: some people are just more talented than others. Without necessary talents you won't be i.e an orchestra conductor.

I used to ask like many "how hard is it to be an anesthesiologist? You just measure the drug, right?". Today I went on a dive to discover hardness in some medical professions. So now I realize the quick decision making and just pure mental processing powers and situation awareness needed for the job of an anesthesiologist. It's also not that hard to note talent traits in all types of surgeons - you need to have multiple plans always, adjust and come up with new plans, quickly make decisions and so on.

question about radiologists

So then I asked about the other greatly payed medical profession of radiologists. Radiologist do mostly two things: 1) make the measurements and imaging 2) analyze them and pass the notes and diagnosis to other doctors. My take so far is that 1) is simple. Excuse my ignorance, but would you agree that the job here is mostly straightforward following of instructions? It looks like most of the work is covered by the machines themselves where the radiologist instructs the patient and uses the software provided by the machines.

To me it looks like obviously the harder part is the analysis of 2). Here the radiologist needs to have broad knowledge starting from the precise anatomy and pathology and finishing on medical procedures. The talent here in demand is a good memory and ability to learn fast and vast and also the ability to understand complex phenomena, I think we can all agree on that?

My question for you is how hard is the job in the instant of making a diagnosis? So the learning process, reading of the literature is a sort of slow-thinking - you get a lot of time to process a lot of information. I am - as not-a-radiologist myself - super interested in knowing how hard in terms of mental processing is the act of conducting the diagnosis itself? To me as an ignorant it doesn't seem that crazy hard, because I - as an ignorant - don't see a lot of data contained in the mri and other imaging. What do you think about that? Could you tell about some hard diagnosis you've made in your experience?

A finishing note

I'm really not some type of a jerk trying to insult anyone not having some crazy intellectual profession. I realize my talents and limits, came to an agreement with them and now ask honest questions about their role in our lifes. The above question is a part of my inquiry. Myself I'm a software engineer and I don't want to be one of these guys that don't see anything meaningful outside of their narrow professions - which they find most important in the whole world - like many of the software people do.

EDIT

I am not super interested in the skills needed to get the job in the first place - here I found plenty of articles. Seemingly every medical profession is a hard job to get because of the long training and competition at every step - studies, residency etc. Not interested in that.

submitted by /u/zaabson
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/Radiology/comments/15y6feh/how_big_is_the_importance_of_talent_in_radiology/