Parag J. Patel, MD, FSIR
What initially inspired you to want to become part of the SIR leadership structure?
Parag J. Patel, MD, FSIR: It started with wanting to be a volunteer member and to help both IR and SIR in the ways that I was able while early in my career. My clinical interests are rooted in vascular disease and general education, and so I followed those interests. I became a young program director and volunteered to help with educational and program development for trainees, and as I became more involved, more opportunities presented themselves.
During that time, I received a lot of feedback and course directors viewed my enthusiasm as an opportunity to engage a new and motivated early-career member. Things evolved from there, and as I had more opportunities and voiced interested in them, I was able to go up the leadership chain and be exposed to even greater volunteer options.
What do you enjoy most about being a member volunteer?
PP: Getting to meet like-minded individuals in the same field who share my passion to move things forward. When you become part of volunteer leadership, you see the big-picture focus of SIR and learn more about the issues that the society faces, and then get to work with a group of volunteer leaders to address those issues. You get to be in the trenches and push through these issues with a group of members who care as much as you do. And it’s shown me how important individuals like that are and how much we need more volunteer leaders willing to move the society forward.
Previous presidents have placed a priority on efforts such as fostering research or expanding DEI efforts. Is there an area you plan to focus your term on?
PP: I feel very passionately about enabling IRs to practice clinical IR, and we still have a long way to go before we make that transition. We have a generation of IRs who are not fundamentally trained in clinical practice—we grew into an image-based specialty that recognized clinical importance later in the game. Our trainees now are required to have clinical experiences and round on patients, but they’re entering a workforce where there are a lot of IRs not comfortable with that work model and may not support it. We have work to do get the house of radiology to support that, so clinical IR can happen within an office-based lab (OBL), IR/DR practice or a multispecialty group.
You have spent the last few years working on the SIR governance evolution. What did you learn from that process that you think will serve you in your new position?
PP: The governance evolution wasn’t my idea alone—far from it. It was a long process that involved surveying past leadership and staff, and we sought feedback on how other societies structure themselves as well. What I learned through this process was that my pre-conceived notions of the “correct path” weren’t always right. My perspective was based on my experiences and education, and I sometimes grew frustrated when others couldn’t see things my way. But as I listened to others and understood their perspectives, I learned that there are areas where I need to look at a problem through someone else’s lens. I learned about compromise, and we were able to incorporate a lot of feedback on how best to organize the governance evolution. As a result, I think we came up with something that significantly improves how SIR and SIR Foundation communicate and operate.
What do you think is the next challenge for IR?
PP: I think that what differentiates us and makes us unique and special is also a challenge. IR prides itself on a diversity of treatments and our skill in thinking through solutions to come up with minimally invasive treatments. But because of that—and our natural predilection to personalities that thrive on challenge and problem-solving—nothing that binds us is disease-based or area-focused. We use our communal skillset for everything we do, regardless of disease state or therapy. As a result, our mindset and skillsets are hard to identify within a specific focus of medicine for lay public of administrators. We are part of the treatment for so many disease states, like oncologic care or fibroids, but we don’t own them.
Everyone who identifies as an IR needs to circle the wagons and figure out what will elevate our identity and specialty in the field of medicine. I believe the key to this is understanding the importance of securing our data together as it relates to real-world evidence. A repository like VIRTEX quantifies the problem-solving mindset and will allow SIR to use that data to negate or nullify reimbursement cuts or include IR therapies in the algorithms of disease states. Rather than relying on case studies or anecdotes, we would have thousands of case studies at our fingertips. A lot of other societies have already recognized the importance of this kind of data and have already done the work—so IR needs to catch up.
Would you say one of your priorities is elevating the IR identity within the broader medical community?
PP: I’m focused on seeing how we reach the end goal—which to me, is to be better recognized within the medical community as a whole and to be recognized as a specialty that is critical to the functioning of a hospital ecosystem. Part of the challenge is in creating uniformity in our practices: You would expect the same clinical service from a cardiologist or surgeon between hospitals in a town or state, but we don’t have that uniformity. As a result, we are recognized within different pockets and within our communities but not on a broader scale.
We are making changes, though. Our training pathways now prioritize uniformity, as well as clinical care—which is what will truly differentiate us from the average radiologist.
What are your passions outside of IR?
PP: I love the outdoors and going to national parks with my two daughters. I also really enjoy hiking: I just summited Kilimanjaro in January and before that I completed the Inca Trail hike to Machu Pichu in Peru. During that time, when I’m with my friends or family, I love the break from email and pagers and social media—all those things that ding us all day and can create stimulus overload. Life gets busy in health care because we’re in high-pressure situations, and to be able to give yourself a break to clear your head and think through things in the beauty of the world truly resets you.
