Assessment of general practitioner's knowledge of clinical applications of nuclear medicine

The demand for nuclear medicine procedures is growing in recent years but training of medical students in this subject is not appropriately developed. There is no well defined program for training medical students in the field of nuclear medicine. To evaluate the knowledge of the general practitioners from clinical applications of nuclear medicine. One hundred and six general practitioners (58 male and 48 female) participated in an exam with 14 multiple questions (Four question on general nuclear medicine and 10 questions on clinical applications of nuclearmedicine). Also their idea was asked regarding training in nuclear medicine. Validity of questions was confirmed by nuclear medicine specialists and consensus of four reference text books(3-5). Minimum score was 0 and maximum score was 14. Correct answering of less than 50% of questions were considered as poor, 50-70% were intermediateand >70% as good. Of all participants, 95% were under 40 years old, 92% graduated in the last 10 years and 52% were trained in Mashad universities. The study showed that 32% of participants have poor results and only 12% of participants had good results. About 62% of participants correctly answered to less than 58% of questions. Overallmean score was 7.53􀁲 2.72. Doctors graduated from Tabriz universities had significantly higher scores than graduates from other universities. Sixty nine percent of participants had no training in nuclear medicine at all and the rest had a variety of 3-15 hours of training. About 90% of participants needed more information in nuclear medicineas they checked in the questionnaire. Our study showed that knowledge of general practitioners in the field of nuclear medicine is poor and they need to improve their knowledge.