How does it work?

PERFORMS EQA (Personal Performance in Mammographic Screening), the leading educational self-assessment and training scheme for breast screening readers, has been in use for over 30 years in the UK.

All national breast screening personnel involved in reporting screening mammograms take part annually by reading sets of challenging breast screening cases on their clinical workstation and report their decisions about each case using the PERFORMS web-based reporting software.

All participants have their own confidential web portal where they can fully examine all aspects of their performance in comparison to experts and their colleagues nationally.

What to expect?

The PERFORMS EQA​ scheme is endorsed by the Royal College of Radiologists and Public Health England to benefit breast screening readers. It helps participants to improve their skills and knowledge through Continuing Professional Development (CPD), remain up to date in their specialities and comply with the relevant professional standards, providing them with appropriate CPD credits. The scheme is mandated for all breast screening readers.

All participants examine the same high-quality test sets, which scientifically evaluates their performance. Each test set, which includes difficult normal, benign and malignant cases with subtle or interval cancers, bilateral appearances, multi-focal tumours, etc., provides participants with information about their strengths and weaknesses in reading performance. In addition, it confidentially compares them with their colleagues at a national level and enhances new breast screening readers’ performance, building their confidence and image appraisal skills. Finally, PERFORMS identifies under-performing outliers and provides further tailored training to improve their performance.

PERFORMS EQA is mandated in the following documents:

NHS BREAST SCREENING PROGRAMME (BSP)
PUBLIC HEALTH COMMISSIONING IN THE NHS 2018/2019
MORE DETAILS: ROYAL COLLEGE OF RADIOLOGISTS