Female representation in interventional radiology still lagging behind other specialties
Female representation in interventional radiology residency programs is on the rise, according to new data published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
The number of female IR trainees has grown by nearly 17% since 2018. This is encouraging, but the number still lags behind those seen in other procedural and radiology specialties, authors of the new paper note.
“Although women now comprise the majority in medical school classes, they are still underrepresented as residency applicants in many surgical and procedural specialties, including interventional radiology,” Emily R. Hunt, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and colleagues explain. “In 2023-24, women comprised 29.3% of the applicants applying into integrated IR residency programs as their preferred specialty.”
The discrepancy could be owed to the relative newness of dedicated IR residency programs, which were made official in 2014, the authors suggest. To this end, they sought to determine how female representation has evolved since the inception of IR residencies 10 years ago.
The team retrospectively reviewed survey data from the National Graduate Medical Education database. They focused their attention on IR and seven other specialties with qualitative similarities to the subspecialty, comparing data from the academic years that fell between 2018 and 2023.
Throughout the entire study period, female representation in IR residency grew by a little over 16%, rising by approximately 4% year over year. Of all the specialties, integrated vascular surgery saw the highest number of female trainees during the 2022-2023 academic year, at 38.4%. In comparison, integrated IR lagged significantly behind, yielding the second lowest growth, at just over 26% (2,831 out of 12,712 residents in 2018-2019 versus 3,772 out of 14,351 residents in 2022-2023). Orthopedic surgery saw the lowest growth.
The authors pointed to prior papers that analyzed the driving factors behind the lack of female IR residency applicants in the past. Those papers named additional radiation exposure, concerns with work/life balance, fewer female mentors within the specialty and being overlooked in the workplace as potential reasons. Lack of awareness about the specialty also could be a factor.
Regardless, more must be done to address the issue, as a lack of women in IR can have long-lasting implications, the group cautions.
“The underrepresentation of women in IR may manifest as the observed slow growth in female trainees, potentially acting as both a contributor and byproduct of such a phenomenon,” the authors suggest. “Low female representation may trickle down into the gender composition of future faculty positions and ultimately mentors for the next generation of trainees and medical students.”
The team suggests that more support for female mentorship initiatives and raising awareness are both crucial aspects of improving the specialty's current imbalance in representation.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.