 Welcome to the modality booth where I'm joined by my good friend Dr. Amy Patel who's the current president of the American Association of Women in Radiology. We're very excited to announce our partnership today where we're gonna collaborate on our joint mission of advancing and supporting women in radiology and transforming the way radiologists learn and thrive. In support of this mission we've been partnering for the better part of two years now with the AWR to elevate the amazing faculty at the AWR giving them the platform to teach and it's really really critical that we have a diverse group of faculty inspiring our future generation of radiologists. So could it be more excited to be doing this in partnership with you today? Thank you we're really excited about the partnership and just improving ways that we can amplify women radiologists and radiation oncologists and we have so many great members in the AWR who are a fantastic educators so but they need a platform to amplify their skills and so this partnership we feel with modality can serve that purpose and not just elevate radiologists and radiation oncologists in the United States but around the world. We now have an international membership category with the AWR. We got a lot of feedback that there were women radiologists and radiation oncologists from different countries not getting the support that we provide in America so we are now expanding our tent on a global scale so it just felt like the right fit with modality to help amplify everyone under the same umbrella. So for now I will sign it and then you'll sign it and then I want to chat with you a little bit about what we're gonna be doing together and sort of what do you think are some of the biggest needs in improving this issue? Sure absolutely. All right and it says in our partnership agreement our mission is to collaborate on shared on our shared commitment to advancing and supporting women in radiology and transforming the way radiologists learn and thrive so we're very excited about the partnership. You know why am I allowed to be here talking about this? I don't know that I'm the most qualified person but I've been building this platform now for a better part of the five, six years. Our second faculty that we brought on was a woman named Dr. Janney Collins and for those that knew Janney she's very dynamic, powerful, one of the earliest pioneers in academic radiology period and is that one of the most prolific careers as a female radiologist in education and so she really inspired me and helped us think about what would it mean to build an amazing platform in education and helped us build out our roster of radiologists. She went one by one knocking out doors and calling out doctors to participate but day one she helped me think about how important it was to include a wide range of excellence and I don't know if you know Dr. Collins but she's actually been kind of ill lately and Dave Yousam kind of took over and I think he did a really good job taking the torch after that making sure that you know having a diverse roster has been really important. Why does all of it matter? I can't speak to everybody's experience. I can speak to my own experiences. My wife's radiologist she's one of 12 radiologists in her program. She was the only woman and so I saw her firsthand you know dealing with being the only female radiologist on the team and needing sort of that mentorship and leadership she navigates you know having kids in residency, fellowship, trying to build a career, figuring out how to balance it all and so the importance of her having sort of female leaders and female mentors to look up to is something that I feel like I've experienced a little bit firsthand but you know tell me a little bit about your experience and why you think this is important. Yeah well I kind of had a similar experience to her. I was the first female chief resident in an all-male program at the University of Kansas in Wichita in 2015 and you know we unfortunately as much as we are continuing to push there's still a paucity of women going into the field so we're still around between you know 23 to 27 percent of the field of radiology comprised of women but it's such a wonderful field for women and you know I wrote an article that was published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology called Radiology's best kept secret and I talk about in this article how you know this is such a wonderful specialty for women and I wish more women knew about this specialty so I think it's really important for us to amplify who we are what we do as radiologists whether it's you know me as a breast imager out in the community talking to patients about the importance of getting their mammogram or whether it's you know our organization collaborating with your organization so that women have opportunities to give lectures so that we can have medical students see these women and say hey I want to be a prolific educator like that person someday I mean everything we do makes an impact so I you know we hope that in collaboration we can just continue to amplify our efforts and ultimately the end game is we want to see women thriving in the specialty but we really want to see more women entering the field yeah so what are some of the other initiatives that are going on at AWR that people can learn about yeah so there's a lot of amazing initiatives of course our partnership with Medality where women radiologists and radiation oncologists if they would like to share a content and give lectures that is something a great opportunity for them to provide educational content so we're really pushing for that we have so many virtual and in-person events we have a really great partnerships with different societies such as society breast imaging society pediatric radiology we are now bringing an educational session to rank and rate this here in Boston we are starting a women's leadership track in collaboration with the Radiology Leadership Institute at their summit in Boston which will be executed the inaugural year will start in 2024 so that's really great here at RSNA we collaborate with them and have an educational session every year so just continuing to build our network so we can provide diverse offerings and content and really you know show the value of being a member and you know it's a great avenue for networking sponsorship mentorship a lot of women and in practices and institutions whether it's academics private practice tell radiology they may not have the support where they are physically so having organizations like AWR and bringing other partners into our tent it's only you know to their benefit so that you know it can improve their network as well yeah you know it's it's so shocking that I think over half of med students active med students are female and yet the numbers that go into radiology is really low and you know we don't need to speculate exactly on why it is that you know female candidates end up claiming that they don't choose radiology but I think one thing that's known is that if you know about radiology maybe through a friend or through a mentor or often through a family member you're more likely to consider it because you understand all of the benefits of being radiology and I think one of the questions I'm asking myself is to be hearing a little bit about AWRs how can we work together to reach out to med students to so one thing that our company's been really active in we make a lot of our educational content free for med students to learn about radiology get excited about radiology combined with maybe the AWRs faculty and maybe even some sort of mentorship in between to say hey I should really be thinking about radiology how should I consider it yeah it's such a difficult rotation it's not a fun rotation as far as rotations go within med school and so I understand why it's difficult to attract people you feel yeah no absolutely and I think that you know the more and we're working on this to add like an academic institutional level where we're trying to appeal to those early so we're trying to you know really have boots on the ground at the medical student level you know most medical schools now have a radiology interest group so like at the University of Missouri Kansas City yeah at the University of Missouri Kansas City I'm the medic I'm the faculty advisor for a radiology interest group so and we have I mean it's been amazing from when I first started back in 2019 to now last year we had 12 students go into radiology and that was like a huge for that class I mean when I went into radiology only five of us were going in and now we're averaging like 12 to 15 per class and the classes aren't very big because we're a six-year med program so we we top around like 110 students per class so it's pretty awesome to see you know how you know just getting involved getting these students exposed early can make a huge impact so I think offering them educational content for example for free so they can be exposed to early can really be paramount in their decision-making of what specialty they choose down the line are there other things that trends that you notice about you know women in radiology they're unique you know do they choose different specialties at different rates that causes impacts downstream or different career paths like academics versus private yeah I mean I think the climate's always changing you know like we saw this big you know recently we saw a lot of academic women going into private practice because of the flexibility with you know having more vacation and maybe having more pay but now we're sort of starting to see a shift back because academic institutions are now increasing how much they are offering for salaries because they there's such a shortage in the academic world so we're seeing you know those those shifts you know and I think that as far as the women in general are going into radiology I think they're just looking for that flexibility component I think that I think that now more than ever my and I hope to see this continue to trend we're seeing that women are being more supported those who want to have children and things like that and being supported in their practices and institutions and we want to continue to see those trends because during my time when I was a resident honestly the support of having a child in residency really wasn't there three children I did not have three children my wife had three children during residency in fellowship and had a collective four weeks off using vacation yeah for all three and so thankfully I think they are finally made some positive news yes I don't think those moves have reached private practice yeah or even a lot of hospital systems yeah so it's good to see them leading up the front there's so much work to be there's still a lot of work to be done but even today I got a text so at UMKC with our radiology residency program now male residents get six week can take up to six weeks off from maternity leave and when I was a resident they only got one week max effect so we are definitely making headway when it comes not just to the mother but to the father and to the partner we're definitely seeing changes and yes we do have a long ways to go particularly in private practice but I think now with the new you know the paid leave resolution that passed to the ACR I think people are starting to see now that they've got to think differently about paid leave so last question for you what advice do you have for let's say female residents who are trying to get involved and play a role in shaping the future yeah I you know whenever I have female trainees that come to me and say you know like where do how do I get started what do I do you know and I tell them like for me the way that you know everybody's path is different but for me my path really the way I was able to ascend was really being involved in organized societies and through organized societies the networking component happened so you know all the doors that open for me with getting involved in the American College of Radiology early the American Association for Women in Radiology I was you know I've been active since I was a young trainee these can really lead to huge leadership opportunities and just widening your network you know through here of course like I was talking to Deanna earlier at the Society breast imaging meeting a couple years ago she just came by our AWR booth and we hit it off and look at where we are now so always just having those avenues of communication open the networking I think it's really important but really I mean the world is their oyster I know it sounds very cliche but now more than ever I think women are being supported in all leadership roles and being sponsored and so if any woman has any modicum of interest of ascending there is a diverse cadre of mentors and sponsors here to support that it's a great point I think the only thing that I'd add is there's so many things to get involved in and so you just find out what you like and get interested in it and you know you don't have to be a leader by only being involved in academic society you can be a leader because you get involved in a company where you find what they're doing interesting or you get involved in research whatever you do just get involved to the max and I think it's easier to do when you find things that you really enjoy doing they give you a lot of energy and then you can start to parse down you know once you found your areas of interest because like I'll do things in Kansas City that you know don't really pertain exactly to radiology but I'm passionate about so you know like I chair the American Cancer Society Kansas City chapter and yes it's not just focused on radiology but it's focused I know on the continuum of cancer care which I'm passionate about so I think over time as you garner these roles you'll know what you like what you don't like and then you can really focus on your future well said well thank you so much this is really exciting day for us we're so grateful to be partnered with your organization and look forward to many years of continued success yes we do too thank you