It’s been going on since I applied for residency in the 80s and I got to thinking about it for the umpteenth time after reading a Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) blog post lamenting our sad situation. I stewed over it and concluded: Bloggers, you are wrong. This perennial is dead.
I refer, of course, to our professional identity crisis, our toxic mix of pride and self-loathing. The conversation usually begins with recounted conversations with family or friends who ask: “What do you do?” Which is followed by contradictory pronouncements based on professional genealogy, taxonomy, or genetic expression (or bias).
The conversation has not matured as rapidly as the field, and while I’d venture to guess most of us know what we are, we are challenged to find the right words, or we trip ourselves up with too much detail in a self-defeating push for irrelevant accuracy.
So let me tell you what you are:
- You are a surgeon—a medical doctor who performs invasive procedures to diagnose and treat disease.
(If you agree, skip this paragraph): For those still stubbornly holding on to the life raft, remember that all doctors diagnose and treat disease. Surgeons are the subset that do some of this through procedural care. But remember, that most surgeons—us included—spend as much time in the non-invasive realm seeing patients, talking, diagnosing and prescribing, as they do operating. Gastroenterologists, cardiologists, anaesthesiologists, dermatologists, even radiation oncologists, are all surgeons. It’s defined by what you do, the highest form of your art.
- You are also an interventional radiologist or ‘IR’.
(If you agree, skip this paragraph): You are probably troubled by the ‘R’. I get it. But the marketplace has you labelled. Admit it—when you tell people that you’re an ‘IR’ you get the most—generally positive— name recognition. It could be worse. You could be called an ‘ENT’ (ear, nose, throat). An oto…what? Embrace our acronyms/initialism. Stop the fussing and promote our ‘IR’ brand, it’s baked in exclusivity.
So, you’re an IR? What’s that?
The answer depends on the audience. Most doctors trained in the last 20 years know what IRs are. So, I’ll focus on the public: IR is virtual reality surgery. We travel throughout the body in an environment created by imaging machines and solve problems by deploying highly engineered devices and drugs. It’s as cool as it sounds.
So, what’s in a name? I submit that we are the fortunate inheritors of a name that is at
once accurate and trendy. I can’t think of a better place to be or a better time. Our adolescent identity crisis has passed.
We are IRs!
Brian Stainken is a professor of interventional radiology and Interventional News’ co-editor-in-chief.
