Training template for digital breast cancer screening

Radiologists and radiographers are the two key professionals involved in breast cancer screening. Their competences have an immense impact on the quality of the screening services.

To ensure that the radiologists and radiographers are competent and have received the necessary training, the JRC developed the Training Template for digital breast cancer screening.

The ECIBC Training Template for Digital Breast Cancer Screening addresses radiologists and radiographers working in screening programmes with digital breast cancer screening technologies.

The template developed for the European quality assurance scheme shall help make sure that radiologists and radiographers receive adequate levels of training both before and while they are practising and have the necessary skills to practice their profession.

The templates consist of training topics together with the skills acquired through that training.

The activities were steered by the involvement of the JRC and a subgroup of the ECIBC working groups.

The following steps were followed to develop the templates:

1. Systematic searches were performed in published resources to build a knowledge-base on how trainings were organised across Europe and  within which legislative contexts. A survey was conducted to retrieve the training templates already in use.  
2. The retrieved information was grouped and compiled into two distinctive lists as follows:
   • The training topics:  training for localisation and biopsy techniques for impalpable lesions, training for communication and psychological care of women, etc.
   • The essential skills that the professional is expected to acquire after training: to be able to perform presurgical wire localisation, to be able to assess and respond to women's need for information, communication and general care, etc.
3. Each training topic was matched to the essential skill acquired through that training.
4. Similar training topics (coming from different training templates) matched for the same skill were combined and harmonised into a single one.
5. In the case an essential skill is not covered by a training topic, a new one was proposed by the expert group, with the support of the JRC.
6. The final list of training topics together with the skills acquired through them were elaborated to form the ECIBC training template structured in a harmonised way with the existing European training templates.