Research Proposal – Diagnostic Radiography
Student’s Name
Proposed Title
Should be concise and informative Title: “An audit of the rejection rates of Anterior-posterior projection radiographs of the pelvis in a district general hospital radiology department”
Research question
Must be accurate, succinct and answerable
For example: 1. To what extent the deleted images take place in digital radiography?
2. Which are the motives for deleting those images to advance the radiological services?
Aims/Objectives
A single aim is based on the research question and is generally written in the future tense. For example:
OBJECTIVES – More than one objective will arise from the research question and the aim of the research.
Aims/Objectives
The report aims at reporting the reject rate for DR in one of the allocated hospitals. It will help in carrying out investigations to discover the reasons behind the rejection of the images and which kind of projections and examinations experienced a lot of rejections.
Research Objectives
1. To review the root cause of deleted images in the radiography within the hospital.
2. To explore and monitor the safety, efficiency, and quality of the existing practice of diagnostic radiography.
3. To examine the reasons behind the rejection of the images and which kind of projections and examinations that experienced a lot of rejections and how this rate of rejection varies between various radiographers.
Brief justification for work
Brief review of the key literature, demonstrating ‘need’ for the research and possible clinical relevance or implications. Consider why is this is important to radiography and will it impact both here in UH and perhaps a broader population.
(Maximum 250 words) If the rejected images are not put before the attention of the radiologist for diagnosis, this will have a positive effect on the patients and the performance of that department. Therefore, this study is significant to radiography because the hospital will need to improve the area for better services to service users. It is also important to ensure that doctors do not misdiagnose the patients. Moreover, the research on the high rejection rate in the radiography department within the hospital will also help sharpen the skills needed by the students studying radiography. Atkinson (2020) notes that other previous studies have been done concerning this research, however, they did not accomplish what was expected in terms of solutions. This study will help in achieving a long-lasting solution for the problem and will seek to train more radiographers.
Proposed research design and methodology
Approach – Quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods?
Data collection (instrumentation)
Surveys or questionnaires; Interviews and focus groups; Public or private observations; Experiment; Analysis of existing data retrospective); audit
Sample
Target population; sample size; sampling method/recruitment
Data Analysis
Thematic analysis? Descriptive and/or inferential analysis? How will data be presented? (pie charts/scatter graphs? Bar charts? Tables?)
(Maximum 250 words) Proposed Research Design and Methodology
A retrospective longitudinal study will take place for three months (October, November and December 2020) and three months from previous year (October, November, December 2019) to compare the patients’ activities due to COVID-19and to get the required results.
Approach
This research will take place as part of an in-depth clinical audit method.
Data Collection
An automated data collection software will be used in collecting the data from the allocated hospital during the research period. This CRIS software provides a robust method of data collection since it will help record all the images that will be acquired from all the workstations. The images will be analysed from the General x-ray room.
Sample
The study will target the rejected images sample. Data from that sample will be collected, which will play a critical role in uplifting the service quality of users and reducing the dose to patients to ionising radiation (Toomey et al., 2019).
Data Analysis
According to Alahmadi (2019), the collected data will then be analysed using a descriptive statistic on IBM Statistics and Microsoft excel to determine the number of rejected images that had occurred during the required period from that workstation. After the analysis is complete, all the data will be calculated in terms of percentage and standard deviation to determine and evaluate the rate of rejection for each projection and assessment and the image rejection, as well as the reject rates for individual radiographers. The rejected rate will be calculated by dividing the total number of rejected images by the total number of images acquired. Then the data will be presented in the form of tables and graphs for easier interpretation.
Ethical considerations
What ethical concerns should be considered and how will you mitigate this (e.g. coercion, confidentially, anonymity, informed consent etc)
Since all the data will be accumulated retrospectively and de‐identified, there will be no need for informed consent. All the information that will be provided by the patients will remain confidential. Anonymity is guaranteed, as no member or patient recognisable information is required, albeit some expansive socioeconomics (age, sexual orientation) will be taken into consideration to determine their effects. On the other hand, this research will guarantee the specialists and the manger that all required authorisations will be given preceding any information assortment.
References
Provide at least two literature sources of information relevant to your study Alahmadi, O. S., Alrehaili, A. A., & Gameraddin, M. B. (2019). Evaluation of reject analysis of chest radiographs in diagnostic radiology.
Atkinson, S., Neep, M., & Starkey, D. (2020). Reject rate analysis in digital radiography: an Australian emergency imaging department case study. Journal of Medical Radiation Sciences, 67(1), 72-79.
Toomey, R. J., Chen, M., Davies, K., Fernandes, K., Olav, S., Heitmann, M. S. J., … & Pettka, J. A. (2019). Does training have an impact on radiography students’ approach to chest X-ray image quality assessment? OPTIMAX 2018, 113.
Reviewer Feedback
For use by academics only
For academic use only
Research proposal (please delete as appropriate):
I. seems feasible
II. needs further consideration around methods
III. needs major re-working
IV. not workable – please choose new research topic
Please note research supervisors will be allocated in October
No student may start data collection until your given supervisor gives permission to go ahead
Any other comments: