By Gina Kolata
Dr. Jennifer Kemp, a Denver radiologist, is leading an effort to make radiologists more accessible to patients.
When Dr. Jennifer Kemp’s husband got advanced rectal cancer, she got an unexpected patient’s-eye view of her profession.
Her husband was having scans every three months, terrified each time that they might reveal bad news. Dr. Kemp, a Denver radiologist, would sit down with her husband’s radiologist afterward. Even so, it could be an hour before a scan was ready to be viewed.
“I couldn’t believe how anxiety-provoking it was to wait even an hour,” she said. “Sometimes he would get a scan I didn’t feel comfortable interpreting and he had to spend 24 hours waiting — and I had connections,” she added. “That was absolute torture.”