Rationale and Objectives
To review the gender gap in Interventional Radiology (IR) and explore the role of
the Integrated IR residency.
Materials and Methods
A retrospective review of gender demographic data of medical school applicants to
Integrated IR residency from 2016-2021, and active residents/fellows (“trainees”)
in IR and peer specialties from 2007 to 2021.
Results
Women comprised 21.0% of medical student applicants to the Integrated IR residency
in the 2020-21 academic year, versus 12.9% of Diagnostic Radiology (DR) resident applicants
to the Independent IR residency; these figures have stayed relatively constant since
2016-17 and represent a statistically significantly difference (p=0.000044). The Integrated pathway has become the dominant source of IR trainees, growing
from 4.4% in 2016-17 to 76.3% in 2020-21 (p=0.0013). From 2007 to 2021, the percentage of all IR trainees who were female grew
from 10.5% to 20.3% (p=0.005). From 2017 to 2021, the percentage of Integrated IR residents who were female
grew from 13.3% to 22.0% (p=0.053, 19.1% year-over-year growth), and has been higher than the percentage of female
Independent IR residents (p=0.048).
Conclusion
Women continue to be underrepresented in IR, though this gender gap is improving.
The Integrated IR residency appears to have majorly contributed to this improvement,
consistently supplying more women into the IR pipeline than through the fellowship/Independent
IR residency. Women are significantly better represented among current Integrated
IR residents than Independent residents. The now-dominant Integrated IR pathway must
increase women recruitment for continued gender gap improvement.
Key Words
Abbreviations:
IR (Interventional Radiology), DR (Diagnostic Radiology), AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges), SIR (Society of Interventional Radiology), VIR (Vascular and Interventional Radiology), ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education), ERAS (Electronic Residency Application Service)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 02, 2023
Accepted:
January 9,
2023
Received in revised form:
December 31,
2022
Received:
September 23,
2021
Publication stage
In Press Corrected ProofIdentification
Copyright
© 2023 The Association of University Radiologists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
