Pillar 06
Evidence literacy and academic output — critical appraisal, audit and quality improvement, research methods, presentation skills, and the career and certification pathways that follow.
Working knowledge expected across the FC Rad Diag(SA) registrar years.
Critical appraisal
The skills of literature searching and critical appraisal, practised through a structured journal club — how to read a paper and judge whether it should change practice.
Why it matters. Critical appraisal is examinable, career-long, and the foundation of evidence-based practice.
Learning objectives
Audit & QI
How audit, quality improvement, morbidity-and-mortality review and complication classification drive safer, better services — and how registrars contribute.
Why it matters. Governance activity is both a training requirement and the engine of service improvement in the public sector.
Learning objectives
Research methods
The practical arc of academic output — research questions and design, ethics and authorship, and preparing abstracts, posters and manuscripts.
Why it matters. Structured support through the output pipeline is where registrar research most often stalls, and where a society can add the most value.
Learning objectives
How this connects to future training, certification and careers — see the pathways page.
Presentation skills
Building a portfolio and a prospective procedural logbook early — the record-keeping and reflective habits that support later training, certification and career choices.
Why it matters. A prospective logbook is far more useful than a retrospective reconstruction; starting early is a low-cost, high-value habit. This connects directly to the pathways page.
Learning objectives
Every pillar connects to the training and career pathways that follow registrar learning — from supervised exposure to certification and beyond.