Abstract
As more local governments adopt mammography for breast cancer screening, the shortage of qualified doctors skilled in interpreting mammograms must be resolved. Local medical associations, local governments, hospital medical departments, and other groups interested in breast cancer screening are expected to hold more mammogram training courses under the joint auspices of the Central Committee for Quality Control of Mammographic Screening (CCQCMS). The Subcommittee for Education in the CCQCMS has distributed questionnaires since the first training course in Osaka, in order to assess the quality of the training courses and to provide more effective programs based on stratification of participants by experience. In this study, eleven training courses held before March 2001 were reviewed to see how the participants in α-rank courses (for beginners) could obtain higher results. The percentage of doctors who obtained grades A or B in α-rank courses (4 courses) was 31-56%, lower than that for β-rank (4) and γ-rank courses (3) (for more experienced doctors), except in Nagoya 1 (α-rank). In Nagoya 1, achievement was equal to a γ-rank course ; among level1 (with the least experience) doctors, 17% (8% of all participants) obtained grade A, and 67% obtained grade B (33% of all). Ninety percent of the participants obtained grade A or B. Answers to questionnaires revealed that many beginners in Nagoya had regularly participated in workshops on mammogram interpretation. This indicates that attending workshops in Nagoya-style or small-scale training courses before the larger training course helps to improve performance in an α-rank training course.
