Report of Outreach Professor Hemant A. Parmar MD

I had the honor of being selected for ASNR Outreach Professorship to Ghana for the year 2016. I just got back from my visit to Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Ghana. I’m extremely thankful to my host, Dr. Yaw Mensah, and all the other faculties (from Radiology and other clinical disciplines), residents and support staff for making my visit successful and satisfying.   Special thanks to the ASNR and Dr. Walter Kucharczyk for starting this important teaching endeavor throughout the world!

I spent 1 week in Ghana. The program included daily morning lectures from 7.30 to 9.30. I tried to cover all areas of Neuroradiology. The topics included: “Imaging of temporal bone”, “Imaging of congenital brain and spine malformations”, “Imaging of cranial nerves”, “Imaging of sella” and “Basic and Advanced imaging of brain tumors”. Rest of the mornings was spent in the CT and MRI reading area looking at daily cases with the residents and faculty members. In the afternoons from 2-4 pm, I conducted Teaching Cases of Neuroradiology with participation from the residents. While the residents liked all the morning lectures, but the afternoon sessions were the ones that they really enjoyed and learnt the most from.

Korle Bu is one of the most important teaching and referral hospital for Ghana and even some of the neighboring countries. The case volume and spectrum of pathology was indeed fantastic! The residents are very well read and extremely handy with all the online learning resources, pretty much like what I have seen in our reading rooms at Michigan.   During my visit, we discussed several ideas about improving the Radiology service and education at Korle Bu. This included encouraging more multi-disciplinary meetings with Otolaryngology and Neurosurgery departments (Chairs of both departments were supportive of this), encouraging more subspecialty practice amongst the faculty members, weekly teaching schedule for the residents (including presentations by residents), maintaining a resident case log of all interesting cases and to promote increased level of interaction between residents here at Michigan and at Korle Bu.

Overall, this was a great experience for me as I hope it was for them.

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Hemant A. Parmar