I am a fourth-year diagnostic radiology resident at UC San Diego. During my time in residency, I started a RAD-AID chapter at UCSD and helped to develop a global health pathway for the UCSD Radiology Residency Program. One of our chapter’s first international partners is the radiology residency program at the University of Guyana, and I’m excited to be traveling to Guyana in May 2023 for a two-week trip. This project will be the first trip to Guyana by a UCSD resident, so I am looking forward to cementing our partnership by visiting in person. During my time in Guyana, I’m planning to spend time in the reading room working with residents, leading radiology case reviews, and giving lectures spanning the many subdisciplines within diagnostic imaging. I have been soliciting help from radiology attendings at UCSD to develop a file of radiology presentations that I will be able to offer. Additionally, given that I have a particular interest in neuroradiology (and will be embarking on a neuroradiology fellowship at UCSD in 2023), I am planning to help the University of Guyana with their neuroradiology curriculum and streamline their CT and MRI neuroimaging protocols. Finally, I am hoping to set the groundwork for a collaborative case series between the University of Guyana and UCSD, whereby residents from both institutions will be able to share imaging cases and learn from one another.
Most directly, I hope that the residents of the University of Guyana’s radiology residency program will benefit from this project. Of course, by helping to foster the development of radiology education in Guyana, I hope that the people of Guyana will also be able to benefit from our work. Although radiology education can be offered in a virtual forum, there is truly no substitute for in-person teaching and collaboration. Given that I want to lay the groundwork for a long-term partnership between UCSD and Guyana, visiting in person is even more important. One of the reasons that I am specifically interested in working with the University of Guyana’s residency program is that this program is very new; the program was started in collaboration with RAD-AID in 2017. I’m excited to help this fledgling program to mature.
I sincerely hope that my visit to Guyana will be just one of the first links in the chain of UCSD’s partnership with the University of Guyana’s radiology residency program. I want to use my time in Guyana to chart a course of our institutions’ future collaborations, many of which will be virtual (such as remote readouts, case reviews, and lectures), but some of which will continue to be in person. Through the UCSD radiology residency program’s new global health pathway, I hope that future UCSD residents will continue to be able to visit Guyana. And ultimately, I hope to eventually be able to offer the chance for residents from Guyana to visit UCSD. Given that our residency programs serve very different populations with very different pathologies, there is so much opportunity for us to learn from one another.
With the support of a Doximity Foundation grant, and in partnership with RAD-AID and the University of Guyana, I was able to travel to Georgetown, Guyana and spend two weeks working with radiology residents at the Georgetown Public Hospital. As a fourth-year radiology resident at the University of California, San Diego, this was a fantastic opportunity for me to share some of the knowledge and skills I’ve developed during residency. Over the course of my time in Guyana, I worked closely with the residents, helping them to prepare their cases for faculty readout and providing guidance and support along the way. I also gave daily hour-long lectures on radiology topics ranging from intracranial infection to pediatric musculoskeletal injury. Beyond the immediate impact on the radiology residents at the Georgetown Public Hospital, I worked toward building what I hope will be a strong and lasting partnership between the University of Guyana and UCSD, paving the way for an exchange of knowledge between our institutions for years to come.
