Elsevier

Academic Radiology

Volume 20, Issue 4, April 2013, Pages 493-499
Academic Radiology

Radiologic education
Exposure to, Understanding of, and Interest in Interventional Radiology in American Medical Students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acra.2012.09.026Get rights and content

Rationale and Objectives

The purposes of this study were to determine the degree to which medical students are exposed to interventional radiology (IR) in medical school, to assess their knowledge of the field, and to gauge their interest in IR as a career choice.

Materials and Methods

An institutional review board–approved survey was generated using the website www.surveymonkey.com. Medical student participation nationwide was elicited by sending e-mails to administrators of medical schools and radiology residency program directors and asking them to distribute the survey link to their students.

Results

Seven hundred twenty-nine medical students from 21 states responded to the survey. Although 58% of students said they were interested in a hands-on career, only 5.5% of students said they had participated in an IR rotation and only 12.7% were interested in IR. Less than half of the IR domain–related questions used to assess understanding of IR were answered correctly, with greater understanding found among the students who had participated in an IR rotation.

Conclusions

Exposure to IR in accredited US medical education programs is inconsistent, although interest in the field is moderate among medical students compared with interest in other hands-on specialties. Understanding of IR is limited among the study population. Improved understanding of the field and recruitment could result from greater exposure.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

An online survey was created using the anonymous and secure website www.surveymonkey.com. The survey was structured into two halves. The first half included questions designed to identify student exposure to IR during their medical education and their interest in the field. The second half consisted of 10 didactic questions designed to assess student's knowledge of IR procedures (Appendix 1). Respondents were asked to include their year in medical school as well as indicate the state in which

Results

Seven hundred twenty-nine responses were obtained during the 6-month period of March 2009 through August 2009. Respondents were from 21 states (Table 1). The distribution of respondents was equal across medical school years (Table 2). Exposure to IR among the sample population was very limited. An overwhelming minority (.4%) of medical students reported that their medical school has a mandatory IR rotation (Table 3), with 70.8% saying their school did not and 28.8% being unsure. Only 1.7% said

Discussion

To the best of the authors' knowledge, to date there are no large studies of US medical students to determine their affinity for IR. The data acquired from the anonymous survey of >700 respondents from 21 states suggest that IR has a small role in medical school education around the nation and that understanding of this field is limited among both those interested in the field and those interested in other medical specialties. The data suggest, however, that interest in hands-on specialties is

Conclusions

Exposure to IR during the clinical years of US medical education is very limited. While many students are interested in pursuing hands-on specialties such as surgery (15), fewer are interested in IR. Jung et al (15), for example, found that 24% were very interested in surgery and 45% were somewhat interested, whereas we found 15% were interested in IR. The problem is not unique to IR, however, as those in other procedural specialties such as anesthesiology are also questioning how to better

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