“I was concerned, watching my residents study mega textbooks, that they were unwieldy and the access to the key information was obscured by unnecessary information.” – Dr. James Thrall
I, for the life of me, can’t remember why I wanted to go into medicine — sometimes I question myself — but once I got into medicine, radiology was a pretty clear choice. I had a background in mathematics and it seemed to be a place to bring bioscience and hard science together.
The Requisites was founded on the philosophy that less can be more so let’s just provide the information that is important to practice and not all the controversies or the what-ifs that get put in to the mega textbooks. So we ask all the authors to only put in the book what they actually teach at the workstation to their own residents in their own practice. I actually asked the authors not to look up anything, because if they don’t know it, it’s not important enough to go into The Requisites.
One of the things that we have asked of each of the authors is not to just add material when they revise their requisites, but to start from ground zero. So the old material gets eliminated and the new material that is pertinent to the current board examination is included.
The most gratifying aspect of The Requisites, to me, as the series editor and co-author of one of the books is to see so many residents studying these books. We wanted to create a series of books that you could actually study. These are not reference books, these are friends, these are part of the life of a resident in radiology.
James H. Thrall, MD is one of the most highly respected radiologists in the country. He is the first physician to hold both the radiologist-in-chief position at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Juan M. Taveras Professorship of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. He chairs the executive committee of the Harvard Departments of Radiology and is a member of the Radiological Society of North America Research & Education Foundation Board of Trustees. Dr. Thrall is author of Nuclear Medicine: The Requisites, 4th Edition.
In 2007, Dr. Thrall was awarded the RSNA gold medal for “invaluable visionary insight and dedication which have helped chart a course for the specialty.” He has lectured internationally on radiology in medicine, and is considered the world’s preeminent authority in the subject.
Related Author: Harvey A. Ziessman, MD
