The Effect of Mask Wearing on the Accuracy of Radiology Reports in an Academic Hospital Setting.
Can Assoc Radiol J
; 73(2): 320-326, 2022 May.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1441865
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE:
In response to the pandemic, some public health agencies recommend the wearing of surgical masks in indoor spaces including radiology common reporting rooms. We aim to demonstrate whether mask wearing may lead to increased errors incidence in radiology reports. MATERIALS ANDMETHODS:
Our prospective studywas conveyed in 2 parts. Firstly, the participants were surveyed if they believed that mask affected dictation. Then participants performed a dictation they read artificial radiology reports using a commercial voice recognition (VR) system. They performed this task 5 times, each time donning a different mask in random order a surgical mask, surgical visor, N-95, combination of 2 surgical masks and no mask. Error rates were compared with the Friedman test followed by pairwise Wilcoxon with bootstrapping. Multivariate Poisson regression was performed to test for interaction effects between potential predictors.RESULTS:
52 members of an academic radiology department participatedin the study (January - March 2021) . 65.4% of survey participants did not think or were not sure whether mask wearing could affect dictation process. Treating the no-mask condition as baseline, our study found that mean error rates significantly increased up to 2 times the baseline rate when a surgical mask, surgical visor, N-95 or a combination of 2 masks was donned (p < 0.0001). No significant differences in error rates were found between the different mask types (p > 0.05). Error rates were higher for participants with shorter VR training time (p < 0.0001) or who were non-native English speakers (p < 0.0001). There were no interaction effects between mask type, VR training time or English nativity, suggesting these variables to be independent predictors for error rate. Academic rank did not significantly affect the error rate.CONCLUSION:
radiologists underestimate the influence of masks on dictation accuracy. mask wearing may lead to significant increase in dictational errors.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Radiology
/
Radiology Information Systems
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Diagnostic study
/
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Can Assoc Radiol J
Journal subject:
Radiology
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
08465371211024394
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS