new NP / x-ray reports

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Hello. I'm a new NP with 18 years experience as RN. In January I started as a new grad NP with a privately-owned occupational medicine clinic. The owner/doctor just 'retired' and now the providers in the office include me, a new grad part time NP, a NP with 2 years experience in primary care, and a CNS with one year experience at this clinic (clinical lead). We were recently told that we will no longer be sending out x-rays to a radiology group for final reads. We will be responsible for interpreting our x-rays and dictating radiology reports. None of us feel confident in this new expectation since we had minimal education regarding x-rays (mostly chest which we don't do here) and definitely don't have any formal training in radiology. The owner/doctor wants us to call him to 'over read' our x-rays when we have questions, and if he doesn't feel confident in reading it (which never happens), we can send it to a remote radiology service. Does anyone have experience with this? We don't feel comfortable at all with this and have voiced our concerns to the owners, but it fell on deaf ears. My main complaint is that we will have to dictate the radiology reports. My main concern is that this is bad practice, and I am putting myself at risk. Any advice? Thanks!

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Specializes in Psychiatry.

You've articulately expressed you're unqualified to interpret the image so you can't. And shouldn't.

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Specializes in Vascular Neurology and Neurocritical Care.

Agree. You should get trained in this, as this is not an uncommon expectation in Occupational medicine, especially those that also function as urgent care centers. I think all NPs and PAs should have this as a skill set. But for now if you're not confident then you should stick to your guns on that. It is just likely to create issues.

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Anyone have suggestions for actual training/education for reading x-rays and how to dictate radiology notes (focused more on ortho, not on chest x-rays)? Feel like I'm searching online for education, and that's not ok.

Thanks!

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Specializes in Adult Primary Care.

This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Have a board certified radiologist read the x-rays. Your "retired" doctor wants to charge more / make more to read the x-rays, with you being responsible.

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I have no problem making treatment decisions based off my read of an x-ray, but to be the final read? No. That's so much liability and we didn't go through medical school and years of residency to read imaging. Even the physicians I work with want a final read by a radiologist.

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Thanks everyone. I wanted this validation because they were acting like we (new NPs) are crazy and unwilling to learn. We voiced our concerns on several occasions trying to be diplomatic about it, but that got us nowhere. Yesterday we all just said we're not doing it. Didn't make the owners happy, but we aren't willing to risk it all. Power in numbers ;)

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This is some of the largest pile of bull malarkey I have ever heard of in the profession.

But I don't know why it surprises me.

The answer is no.

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Specializes in Medsurg.

That is pretty scary. Not surprised but scary nonetheless

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