To the OP, the earliest this will be available is likely 2016. It will be a slow ramp up and the transitioning of no more IR fellowships will be at least 6 or 7 years after that. There will be a couple of ways to get into an IR fellowship. The difference with this pathway and the prior DIRECTs is that this will be primarily recruiting directly out of medical school as opposed to DIRECT which recruited from other categorical residencies. Also, the IR residency will fit in better with the current ABR model of taking the core exam after 3 years of radiology training. The models that seem to work well include ones such as the UVA pathway which has trained some outstanding clinical interventionalists. At the most recent SIR meeting, I have heard that there are several others popping up incuding U of Michigan and U of Colorado. It will likely be a slow transition, but certainly the training for a modern day clinical IR has to be different then in the past. You have to feel comfortable admitting patients, counseling patients, knowing the diseases and comprehensively managing the diseases that you treat. There are so may areas of disease that we are involved in and these are unheralded and exciting times in IR, but this is certainly much more like surgery than radiology in terms of approach and lifestyle.
Good luck
