Chest X-Ray Assessment is Incomplete without the Lateral View [Response to Letter]

Dear editor

We greatly appreciate Rothschild’s (2021) letter in response to our article. Although the observation made is not directly linked to the overall aim of our paper, we read with interest the comments made as they highlight an important unintended outcome of our paper.

The overall aim of our paper was to demonstrate the importance and value of learning theory and design principles in developing digital resources for medical students. We were aiming for it to be of practical value to anyone, particularly newcomers into medical education, who are faced with the challenge of developing electronic resources.

Rothschild noted that the ‘not so subliminal message is that clinicians (e.g., primary care and specialty providers) need to routinely examine and be able to interpret primary data (e.g., xrays), not just rely upon another physician’s (e.g., radiologist’s) report’. This observation has important implications for medical education, and we hope that it will stimulate further debate, collaboration and research.