Increasing Interest in Nuclear Medicine: Evaluation of an Educational Workshop

Background: Attracting more students to nuclear medicine is an important issue that must be addressed to improve diversity and meet growing staffing needs. Nuclear medicine is only taught in roughly one-third of medical schools with an associated nuclear medicine program and often this education occurs late in the curriculum once students have already chosen a different specialty. Increasing the exposure of medical students to the field early in their training is imperative to motivating students to pursue this specialty as a career. In this study, we implemented two short workshops about nuclear medicine and evaluated its impact on students’ perceptions of the field.  

Hypothesis: We hypothesized that the workshop will increase student knowledge, interest, and confidence in pursuing nuclear medicine as a career.

Methods: We developed and presented 30-minute “Introduction to Nuclear Medicine” workshops to undergraduate college students and preclinical medical students. After the workshops, participants completed a post-pre survey. This type of survey asks participants to indicate their level of agreement with a statement after completing the workshop and to retrospectively estimate what their response would have been before attending the workshop. Within this survey, students were asked to indicate their level of agreement (ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree) with statements about perceived understanding of nuclear medicine as well as interest and confidence in pursuing the field if they were to choose it. Responses were coded on a Likert 1-5 scale with pre- and post- workshop results compared using T-test of means and ANOVA.  

Results: Of the 83 students who attended the workshop, 79 (95.1%) students participated in the survey including 67 preclinical medical students and 12 undergraduate students. Of the 78 participants that provided demographic information, there were 38 (48.7%) women, 5 (6.4%) first-generation college students, and 39 (50.0%) people who identified as either multiracial or a race other than White/Caucasian. Among all participants (n = 79), there was a significant increase in perceived understanding of nuclear medicine (p<0.001), confidence in ability to pursue nuclear medicine (p<0.001), and interest in becoming a nuclear medicine professional (p<0.001). Perceived increase in knowledge was greatest among first-year medical students (p = 0.031) while interest (p=0.40) and confidence (p = 0.85) in pursuing nuclear medicine did not differ based on educational level.   

Conclusions: Student interest in nuclear medicine can be improved using an easily implemented, short workshop. The significant improvements in perceived knowledge, interest, and confidence in pursuing nuclear medicine among this diverse cohort shows promise in utilizing similar workshops for improving diversity in the future. While there may be a benefit in specifically targeting first-year medical students in regards to knowledge gained from the presentation, the overall goal of increasing interest in a nuclear medicine career and empowering students to believe they can achieve this goal were met for all three cohorts without a significant difference between them. Future workshops should target students from all educational levels to increase interest and diversity in the field of nuclear medicine.

Source of mentor’s funding or other support that funded this research: None