Medical Student Experiences at the Annual SIR Conference

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I had an amazing time at this years conference. It was great to meet so many amazing medical students. The SIRF scholars had outstanding presentations which were so impressive! I look forward to hearing from next years scholars. I was particularly impressed by Dr. Vatakencherry's lecture on IR which really showed the spectrum of what we can do. The residents and fellows panel was particularly beneficial since I'll be applying next year. It was great to hear about the new certificate.

Can't wait to see everyone in San Diego next year!!
 
1) How many medical students attended?
2) What will be the first cohort of students affected by the new certificate?
 
chronicidal said:
1) How many medical students attended?
2) What will be the first cohort of students affected by the new certificate?
Click to expand...

I'm curious about this as well. I was told today by a fellow student that there are more medical students interviewing in radiology with the intention of going into IR than there are that interview to go into DR. I find that extremely hard to believe.

I've heard that the new certificate will start being offered in 2015. Obviously...One year too late for me 🙁
 
Yeah I'm pretty confused about this new certificate. I am very interested in IR but will likely go into a DR program. I just hope IR is still an option for me if I choose to do it down the road.
 
Good questions!

1) We had a rough turn out of 50 students, still waiting to get the official head count. Hopefully we can at least double that number next year! The annual meeting is a great way to meet other students interested in IR and learn about the amazing stuff IRs can do.

2) The dual certificate is going to take a few years to be approved by all the powers that be. Most likely it will be this years MS1s (so 2017 graduates) that will be able to apply for the dual certificate but it's still not certain. There are a bunch of programs out there that offer DIRECT and Clinical certificates or the option for a mini-fellowship in IR. Even if you have to go through the traditional pathway, there will still be fellowships available until the last traditional resident graduates. We don't want to leave future IRs hanging without a fellowship to go to!

About the dual certificate - the actual specifics are still in the air but it's looking like a 1+3+2 program i.e. 1 year internship (medicine, surgery or transitional) + 3 years DR + 2 years IR which will kind of be interspersed a bit. The actual design is still in the process of being solidified but this is what was suggested during this years SIR meeting.
 
I attended the SIR conference as a radiology resident. It was great to see so many medical students in attendance. You are the future of the field and it is awesome to see such enthusiasm early on in your careers.

As a radiology resident, I found the SIR conference to be one of the most valuable experiences of my career. The talks on the most recent advances in all aspects of IR were amazing. However, the best part of the conference was that it brought together a group of like-minded, dedicated professionals passionate about the future of IR. Countless ideas were generated about the future of the field, even from the smallest of side conversations.

A medical student even remotely interested in IR has a great deal to gain from attending the conference. You can interrogate the brains of the most influential figures in the IR and speak with device reps marketing technology that will revolutionize the field of medicine in general. You also get to meet your future colleagues. If I had attended the SIR conference as a medical student it would have been invaluable in scheduling my medical school rotations and planning my future training.

I urge those who attended to share to others what they learned at the conference: that IR is a continuously adapting specialty, blazing a path for the future of the field of medicine. With the evolution of clinical IR, one is able to view pathology from a perspective unlike any other in medicine. An interventional radiologist establishes clinical and radiologic diagnoses, performs minimally-invasive morbidity-sparing procedural treatments, and provides long-term follow-up/management, participating in 360 degree patient care. It is difficult to find another group of people so excited about their profession.

I look forward to meeting more enthusiastic medical students at next year’s conference. You guys are awesome. For all those who have not yet done so, I urge you to become and SIR Medical Student member. As has been mentioned on another thread, we need more driven people to increase awareness of the field at a national level, so please also look into joining the SIR Medical Student Council.

http://www.sirweb.org/join-us/beMemPDF/SIR_Medical_Student_Application.pdf

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=996808
 
I attended SIR this year and it was awesome. This was the first time i attended and i highly urge any medical student to attend. I am currently a resident and really wish i attended this conference as a medical student. The field of IR is changing every day and there are so many new procedures that are on the horizon, which will be absolute game changers. One of the seminars i went to was given by Dr. Carnevale, professor and chief of interventional radiology at the University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil. He is one of the lead researchers and innovators for treating BPH with prostatic artery embolization (PAE). This procedure is going to definitely change the way BPH is treated in the future. PAE is going to be a breakthrough for treating prostatic hypertrophy while eliminating the side effects from a TURP. This procedure is done under local anesthesia, and does not require general anesthesia. The preliminary results are amazing and patients do not have to suffer the side effects from TURPS nor the associated hospital costs related to TURPs. This is why IR will be at the forefront of clinical medicine in the future because procedures like this can provide excellent clinical outcomes, with substantially less healthcare costs. This procedure is something i urge everyone to read about since it up and coming and shows how IR is going to be in the forefront of medicine in the future. I recommend next year’s SIR conference in San Diego to all medical students as we have very exciting talks planned out. There are a lot of hands on opportunities with all the exhibits and it is a great way of networking.

Here is an article discussing this procedure:
http://jvir.org/article/S1051-0443(11)01656-3/fulltext
 
Hey everyone. In response to a couple of the posts: There were over 500 trainees at the annual meeting this year in New Orleans - the biggest turnout ever. As the number of trainees interested in IR continues to grow, so does the quality of the conference. The residents and medical students each had thier own cirriculum with talks by some of the giants in the field. It is also a great place to network with program directors for both diagnostic and interventional radiodiology.

One of the joint sessions was on the new dual certificate in IR. For those medical students interested in IR, we learned that the current 1st year medical studuents likely are the first group to be offered the dual certificate. We also learned that there will be a transition time to the new program rather than an abrupt switch, so no need to worry about the changes - in the end, you will get great training in either pathway and all years, including the current residents, will have thier certificates changed to dual once it is done.
 
chronicidal said:
1) How many medical students attended?
2) What will be the first cohort of students affected by the new certificate?
Click to expand...

tco said:
I'm curious about this as well. I was told today by a fellow student that there are more medical students interviewing in radiology with the intention of going into IR than there are that interview to go into DR. I find that extremely hard to believe.

I've heard that the new certificate will start being offered in 2015. Obviously...One year too late for me 🙁
Click to expand...

washu said:
Yeah I'm pretty confused about this new certificate. I am very interested in IR but will likely go into a DR program. I just hope IR is still an option for me if I choose to do it down the road.
Click to expand...

I'm about to start my PGY-2 year, and was worried about the same for medical students interested in IR too; The eventual transition should not affect the future remaining "traditional path" IR applications. What I think will happen is while programs are transitioning to the dual-certificate, less fellowship program spots will be offered. I guess we'll see...
 
Also made it to NOLA this year for the meeting, and it continued to be great. I've been before, and the first meetings are intimidating but once you figure out how the conference works it has plenty to offer.

I always enjoy the film panels (quiz show format) and most of the plenaries. It's easy to discuss the 'sexy' research and technologies that come out year after year (e.g. this year prostatic embo, renal denervation... who knows what will be next!) but what I especially liked were sessions on quality improvement and comparative effectiveness research.

The outstanding clinical research paper of the year was actually a very interesting paper, "Lower-Extremity Endovascular Interventions for Medicare Beneficiaries: Comparative Effectiveness as a Function of Provider Specialty." It basically compared IRs, interventional cardiologists, vascular surgeons, and 'other' providers for doing similar procedures. With the Affordable Care Act down the pipeline, I thought I'd make a plug for increasing interest in these studies too!

See everyone in SD 2014.
 
IO Central has a fantastic forum with a student discussion board for all things related to interventional oncology; there is a thread sharing experiences at SIR 2013: http://www.io-central.org/p/fo/st/thread=128.

The medical student program at SIR this year was planned really well. Lecturers spanned faculty, fellows, residents, and students. Topics included the future of IR, the new dual certificate, the breadth of IR procedures, and a dedicated interventional oncology symposium. The breakfast and Cook SynIRgy dinner provided wonderful networking opportunities; I had the chance to get to know some names and faces that I had seen in various IR related publications.

For me, the highlights of this year's conference were the SynIRgy dinner (for the networking opportunities) and the Film Panel (always fun to see the rock stars of IR compete against each other!).

Looking forward to meeting more of you in San Diego next year!
 
Glad to see more evidence supporting IR techniques, especially head to head with current therapies.
 
tco said:
I'm curious about this as well. I was told today by a fellow student that there are more medical students interviewing in radiology with the intention of going into IR than there are that interview to go into DR. I find that extremely hard to believe.

I've heard that the new certificate will start being offered in 2015. Obviously...One year too late for me 🙁
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if there really are more medical students interested in IR than DR on the interview trail or not... But I can say that the SIR RIT (Resident-in-Training) scholarship had more applicants than ever this year. Its a scholarship offered by SIR and available to PGY-2 and 3s (R1s and R2s) where SIR will pay your room and travel expenses to attend the conference and attend a special curriculum for the residents. It was honestly one of the best experiences I've had in residency. The quality of the speakers was amazing and I walked away feeling excited about my future and my specialty of choice. There was no doom and gloom about the future like you feel at ACR, it was nothing but excitement for the future of IR as a specialty.

I didn't go to medical student day myself, but I highly recommend going to the SIR annual meeting if you can. Even if you aren't 100% sure about IR as a specialty. You can't help but get excited after seeing all the innovation and passion for the field.
 
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