Frequently Asked Questions

The American Board of Radiology (ABR), The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) and the Accreditation Council for Graduation Medical Education (ACGME) have been working together for years to create a more comprehensive training program for physicians wanting to pursue a career in IR. The traditional IR fellowship was designed as a year-long training program to follow a residency in Diagnostic Radiology (DR). Given the ever-increasing number and scope of cases that are performed in IR, a training program with a greater number of IR rotations, and a greater emphasis on patient care and clinical management was created. 

The program is ultimately designed to attract interested medical students who will match from medical school into an Integrated IR Residency program. Given that there is a heavy emphasis on DR during training, residents completing the integrated program will obtain dual certificates in both IR and DR.

We have approval for up to three residents per year in the Integrated IR Residency and one resident in the Independent IR Residency.

The DR program typically allows for one ESIR spot per PGY.

 We highly recommend a rotation through IR at your home, or other institutions before you consider applying. You will apply for residency through the ERAS application.

Please plan on getting involved with your institution’s Radiology Department and IR section early so that you may do rotations prior to applying for residency.

We currently offer a limited number of positions for candidates from other medical schools to rotate on our IR service throughout the year. Please plan well in advance for this opportunity as space is limited.

There is no right answer to this question, but if you are sure that you would like to pursue DR and possibly IR, then we would recommend that you apply to DR programs that have ESIR programs and/or to integrated IR residencies. If you decide later in your training that you would like to pursue IR, there are two options:

1. Complete for ESIR track in your home program and then apply for Independent IR Residency through ERAS (ESIR =  1 year IR training, plus 1 year Independent IR Residency = 2 years) 
2. Complete your DR training then apply for Independent IR Residency through ERAS (2 years Independent IR Residency)

This depends on your year of training and what your home program offers, but basically you have two options: 

1. Complete for ESIR track in your home program and then apply for Independent IR Residency through ERAS (ESIR =  1 year IR training, plus 1 year Independent IR Residency = 2 years) 
2. Complete your DR training then apply for Independent IR Residency through ERAS (2 years Independent IR Residency)

Per ACGME requirements, in order to complete the IR Residency, one must complete an accredited internship. At this time, the UW IR program is not categorical, so, therefore, does not require an internship at UW as part of your match into IR. Although not required, the IR section strongly encourages candidates to complete a surgical internship. An internship in surgery is especially beneficial to those pursuing IR, given the close relationship with surgery and the shared patient population. A transitional year may sound appealing in terms of workload and flexibility but is not very applicable to a career in IR.

If you are a candidate interested in living in the Seattle area for the internship year, we strongly recommend these surgical internships:

• University of Washington Preliminary Surgery
• Swedish Hospital Preliminary Surgery
• Virginia Mason Preliminary Surgery

The IR section at UW is very active in IR research, including basic science, device development, and collaboration with the UW bio-engineering school, and publications related to clinical care and outcomes within many areas of IR. Many of our IR faculty hold outside research funding, including prestigious NIH R01 grants. Specific research interests are listed on the individual faculty members’ profiles.

Dr. Xiaoming Yang is the director of the image-guided biomolecular intervention laboratory at the University of Washington.

More information about the Collective Bargaining Agreement (contract, pay, and benefits) can be found at the UW GME website.