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The culture that demands tight staffing and often long shifts and overtime also makes for difficult scheduling of education. Yet learning a new or emerging technology requires time and attention, and can place additional strain on department scheduling. Radiologic technologists often find it difficult to find personal time for continuing education endeavors, and managers can-not adequately free up schedules for applications training when vendors install new or upgraded equipment. Education on use of new technology has been cited as a factor that can contribute to eliminating avoidable patient radiation exposure,33 yet vendors observe that department workflows prevent radiologic technologists from fully attending applications training. This is a workplace and cultural issue that is problematic in medical imaging departments and health care in general. A survey regarding barriers to new technology adoption revealed that finding time necessary to train staff was the second largest barrier to successful adoption, topped only by cost. An advanced user model (also called a “super user”) has been shown to alleviate some of the time constraints. In addition, social persuasion can help people in the work-place learn by observing others’ performance and through verbal persuasion.35 In other words, effective advanced users can train and encourage adoption through modeling ongoing proper use of equipment, answering questions and providing positive reinforcement. Communication between radiologists and radio - logic technologists is an additional workplace issue that can affect image quality and patient exposure, along with the background knowledge technologists need to prepare for new technologies. The ability of technologists to alert radiologists about issues such as multiple examinations on patients and to receive constructive feedback on image quality and exposure from radiologists depends on effective communication. However, technologists have reported that as use of technology has increased, traditional technologist-radiologist communication has decreased. What little interaction that takes place in many busy medical imaging departments and large practices now occurs through electronic notes that accompany digital images transmitted through a network to the physician interpretation room.
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