wigging out

[dilatate]

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I am a MS3 who has been interested in radiology for about 1 year now and done quite a bit of research in radiology. As the time to committ approaches, I am having a lot confusion and cold feet. I originally wanted to go into IR, but I realized during my rotations that I love DR as well. I think I would be an awesome radiologist either way, and I would really love to contribute to field.

My hold up is this: There seems to be so much uncertainty as to the future of this field, esp. IR. Financially, I am already assuming that I will max out at 250-300K take home even as a partner in a high-end PP group. This doesn't bother me. My main worry is that it seems that both IR and DR are at risk of becoming marginalized by turf battles and in-fighting. Furthermore, I have found that many times clinicians will not even wait for a read and just interpret on their own unofficially and make decisions based on this, even at academic institutions where the quality of reads is excellent.

So I don't want to train for 5-7 years and then worry about being marginalized in both what I can do in practice (turf losses) and the value of my contribution to patient care.

Can someone reassure me?

 

[MrBurns10]

I don't see that happening at all, to be honest. I mean some turf battles will eventually be lost by radiology (e.g. NS winning out on VIR, cardiac MRI to cards), but the fact is that more imaging is being done nowadays than ever before, and usually rads gets first crack at any new technology that arises. Reimbursement probably will continue to go down, but due to medicolegal reasons radiologists will always have the final say in the vast majority of imaging modalities. As far as IR I can't say for sure, but if you like DR enough to go into it than I wouldn't worry too much about IR's future.

That's just the way I see it.