Top 3 Reasons it's ok you didn't match into IR

[DJNYY]

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^by Emory IR fellow

 

[Naijaba]

^by Emory IR fellow

I like the video. I think he misses a big point though: Med students didn't know IR existed in 2008. The IR fellowship match in 2008 was very poor (90 something out of 170 spots) because it was selecting from the pool of radiologists. Diagnostic radiologists made bank in 2008 with low-volumes and high reimbursement. Who amongst them would self-select for a career with longer hours, and (potentially) less pay? It's a completely different pool today. He's right that IR is very much like cardiology and vascular surgery in terms of endovascular approaches; these are some of the highest-reimbursing and most interesting procedures, especially to wide-eyed medical students like myself.

 

[DJNYY]

I like the video. I think he misses a big point though: Med students didn't know IR existed in 2008. The IR fellowship match in 2008 was very poor (90 something out of 170 spots) because it was selecting from the pool of radiologists. Diagnostic radiologists made bank in 2008 with low-volumes and high reimbursement. Who amongst them would self-select for a career with longer hours, and (potentially) less pay? It's a completely different pool today. He's right that IR is very much like cardiology and vascular surgery in terms of endovascular approaches; these are some of the highest-reimbursing and most interesting procedures, especially to wide-eyed medical students like myself.

I agree with what you said. Although, I can't help but think that at least some of the fury toward IR at the med student level is secondary to hype driven in part by the fear of "if I don't catch the train now, I may never" and also the subconcious thought pattern of "this is a wanted specialty and I am a good student, shouldn't I want this too?"

I know in med school, I ran into a bunch of kids who are like... well i'm 250's and AOA so I should really be considering optho, urology, ent even though those specialties have little to do with each other. Now IR is added to that mix, where there is some allure or prestige associated with being able to lock down a certain specialty just because it's competitive and highly desired by others

 

[harambe4ever]

I think part of the reason for the fury is the lack of direction given by SIR for the independent residencies. Nobody knows if there will be 10 spots or 200 spots when the independent spots open up in 2020. So if you're a medical student with an interest in IR, you might as well try to lock down your spot in IR because leaving it until after DR residency is a huge risk.

The rollout of the IR residency has been messy. I guess that is expected.