Future Interventional Radiologists and Where to Find Them–Insights from Five UK Interventional Radiology Symposia for Junior Doctors and Medical Students

Abstract

Background The interventional radiology (IR) trainee recruitment in the UK is lagging behind the pace of service expansion and is potentially hindered by underrepresented undergraduate curricula. Understanding the contributing factors that encourage junior doctors and medical students to consider an IR career will help the IR community to better focus the efforts on recruiting and nurturing the next generation. Methods Anonymised questionnaires on undergraduate and postgraduate IR exposure were distributed to attendees of five UK IR symposia between 2019 and 2020. Results 220 responses were received from 103 (47%) junior doctors and 117 (53%) medical students. Prior IR exposure strongly correlates with individuals' positive views towards an IR career (Pearson's R = 0.40, p \ Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on interventional radiology services across the world

“…It is probable that IR trainee recruitment would be affected in the near term, particularly when clinical exposure is a key determinant for IR career choices. 27 Virtual education platforms that incorporate simulation, livestreamed, or recorded cases, as well as didactic teaching, could increase prospective trainees' exposure to IR. Indeed, virtual platforms are now widely adapted for patient consultations and MDMs.…”

A prospective cross-sectional study assessing teaching of interventional radiology across 20 Australian medical schools, endorsed by the Australian Medical Students Association

“…1 ), noting that students will inherently compare this to their level of understanding of other specialties that they are familiar with. As a survey on student perception, the results suggest that IR understanding is far lower than what the authors would consider adequate and correlates with international literature (Ghatan et al 2010 ; O’Malley and Atherya 2012 ; Hoffmann et al 2018 Jan 1 ; Atiiga et al 2017 ; Garg 2019 ; Xu et al 2021 ; Agrawal et al 2019 ; Foo et al 2018 Dec). This is concordant with similar results in Fig.…”

“…It has been shown that many people decide on their specialty preference at either the medical school or a junior doctor level (Clements et al 2019 Jan; Ghatan et al 2010 ). However, literature from around the world has shown that teaching of IR to medical students remains suboptimal (Ghatan et al 2010 ; O’Malley and Atherya 2012 ; Hoffmann et al 2018 Jan 1 ; Atiiga et al 2017 ; Garg 2019 ; Xu et al 2021 ; Agrawal et al 2019 ; Foo et al 2018 Dec). In Australia, Foo et al showed in their 2018 survey of students from 2 Victorian medical schools, that only 7% of students reported adequate teaching of IR and 59% believed that IR should be in the university curriculum (Foo et al 2018 Dec).…”

Future Interventional Radiologists and Where to find them: Commentary

“…In their current article, Xu Y. et al explore additional contributing factors that may encourage medical students and junior doctors to join the IR community using questionnaires addressed to a selected cohort with higher than usual interest in IR. Their results showed early involvement in IR clinical activities such as participating in procedures, in multidisciplinary meetings, and clinics as the most important contributors for choosing an IR carrier; additional contributors were IR electives, portfolio building and involvement in IR professional organizations as junior members [5]. Interestingly, despite the respondents high IR interest 84% of them were not aware of any published IR undergraduate curricula; 74% of them have not engaged with CIRSE.…”