Trollhättan Hospital increases job satisfaction by offering professional development opportunities to their radiologists

March 2004 - Trollhättan Hospital in western Sweden was experiencing problems in retaining competent staff. A senior radiologist had left and the hospital had hired a locum radiologist for almost a year. Regional authorities did not allow the hiring of more locums. In addition, the hospital was close to losing their only MRI radiologists to the university hospital in Gothenburg. The two relatively junior radiologists were looking to develop their skills more efficiently and this did not seem possible at Trollhättan hospital. If they were to leave, the hospital would lose all MRI reporting capacity and would therefore have to refer such cases to other hospitals. A hospital with a rather limited reporting capacity provides little growth incentive for existing radiologists and would not attract future recruits.

Trollhättan hospital saw the urgent need to provide incentive to their radiologists and to retain specialist competency in-house. They partnered with TMC to implement a training solution whereby their junior radiologists performed the first reading after which TMC sub-specialists would perform the second reading or over-reading, which works as an efficient training method. In addition, when patient volumes were high, TMC stepped in to provide additional reporting capacity for complex and routine bulk examinations.

Radiologists at Trollhättan hospital were satisfied with the training program and were finally seeing opportunities for their own professional growth. The two junior MRI radiologists eventually stayed to help build the hospital’s MRI reporting capacity.