Sharing an update with Interventional News, consultant vascular radiologist Raghu Lakshminarayan (Hull University Teaching Hospital, Hull, UK) describes where interventional radiology (IR) stands within UK healthcare today.
The role of IR in patient care pathways and care delivery is gaining prominence in healthcare leadership across hospital trusts and primary care in the National Health Service (NHS). The speciality demonstrated its key role especially with an increase in day unit procedures benefitting patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The evolving nature of IR jobs, with greater emphasis on clinical responsibilities and patient involvement, highlights the challenges of operating solely within a diagnostic radiology environment. There is an increasing recognition of the need to establish IR as a distinct faculty within radiology to promote patient care. Dual certification in diagnostic radiology will enable interventional radiologists to integrate imaging expertise with clinical skills. Additionally, the interdisciplinary collaboration will provide opportunities to influence government policy for the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR).
Establishing a dedicated faculty of IR would enhance leadership allowing for establishment of IR clinical leads who can address budgetary concerns, equipment needs, and staffing requirements. This would reflect positively in the job plans of IR consultants with adequate time for clinic and inpatient responsibilities. Addressing the shortage of qualified IR professionals is essential to support any new training and faculty structures. Healthcare system constraints make it difficult to support dedicated IR training programmes with its own clinical responsibilities and on-call training. Developing a comprehensive IR curriculum would attract trainees to apply from a broader pool of medical graduates providing a structured dedicated run through programme which emphasises the clinical and patient management issues of IR.
Current awareness of IR is low amongst stakeholders, patients and the public in the UK. This creates challenges and barriers in ensuring consistency in the availability of, and access to, minimally invasive image-guided treatments across the healthcare landscape. The only way of changing this is to enable key decisions of IR to be taken by interventional radiologists. At local, regional and national levels, having interventional radiologists represent the speciality at NHS and government level is necessary to provide the right leadership framework to advance the speciality and optimise patient care. The ideal way to achieve progression would be for IR in the UK to have a faculty status within the RCR, which is a current matter of debate.
Raghu Lakshminarayan is a consultant vascular radiologist at Hull University Teaching Hospital, Hull, UK.
