Whenever you get a group of women physicians, not just radiologists, together, everyone has these stories. And you realize it’s not you, it’s the system. It’s what we have allowed to continue unimpeded for so long.

I’m Rachel Gerson. This is the Tunnel of Truth podcast. We jokingly refer to the CT scanners as the tunnel of truth in radiology because they tell you all the answers. Our guest today is a mid-career radiologist. We are not using her name to protect her privacy. We begin our conversation talking about her early experience as a resident.

Being a woman, a person of color, a child of immigrants, and just because of the demographics of the places where I’ve lived and where I grew up, I’ve often been the only woman or person of color in a room. I’m used to walking in and not seeing anybody that looks like me or necessarily has the same experiences that I do. In my residency, I was one of two women, and I was the only person of color.

Tell me more about that. What has that been like for you?

My very first month of radiology residency, I was placed with an older white male attending, and it was very well known that he was a longtime chronic alcoholic. Everybody knew that he drank on the job. Everybody had a story about this attending. Every single technologist, every single resident, attendings, they all knew this. It was a well known thing in the department that a technologist might get a call at 2:00 AM saying, “Hey, I forgot to throw away my cup of water right by the reading station. Could you please get rid of that for me?” I was told, I was warned by other residents just go in, just keep your head down. He’s a dirty old man, but it’s not going to be that bad. All of us got through it. You should get through it, too. I mean, it was, day one, just wildly inappropriate comments, jokes. Were talking racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, and homophobic.

I mean, it was crazy. I had just left this very hard intern year and finally coming into radiology. I was hoping for a good experience. My very first attending is this person who has somehow been protected by the department, who has been there for a very long time. And so, going in that, no matter your experience, it doesn’t really matter because this has been allowed to go on. So, you know what? Just keep your head down, just keep going. And for some reason, this guy took a liking to me because, I guess, I’m a hard worker. I get my work done, and I try to do it as to the best of my capabilities.

For the last two and a half weeks of the rotation, every single day, it was like, “My wife wants you to come home to dinner. You have to come to dinner. We have to.” And I kept coming up with excuses. But when you have this person in a position of power, you’re starting out with your very first rotation of four year residency, I honestly, I felt like I couldn’t say no. So, next thing you know, I’m showing up at their house with a dessert and a hostess gift, and they’re already drunk. And I just walk in. They’ve already been freshening their drinks. It was terrible. It was just so terrible.

His wife was doing some sort of flambe. I was trying to make sure their house didn’t catch fire. I think I left before dessert. I was finally like, “They’re not even really going to notice.” I mean, I’ve heard all these jokes multiple times. I made sure the stove was turned off, and the dishwasher was turned on, and I snuck out.

Wow.

And that was my experience.

How did you manage that situation? How did you continue to work with that person?

I guess it’s partly knowing when to pick your battles. I mean, this is clearly somebody who was very entrenched in this department and had been protected for a long time. Like I said, everybody had their own story about this person, but nothing had happened to him. So, I was this brand new first year. I just kept my head down and kept moving. For things that were important to me, for things that affected patient care, patient safety, I will always throw down about that. For the educational opportunities for my fellow residents, I kept pushing and pushing, and I made some changes that are, to this day, still in effect a long time later. And I’m proud of that. And I think that I saw that, in the residency, I wasn’t going to get the experience that I wanted, the things that I needed.

So, I started looking elsewhere. It wasn’t a very academic place. There weren’t people doing research projects. So, I took it upon myself to log onto different society websites and find out, “Oh, do they have a means for some lone resident to come and get a scholarship and do this and attend the meeting.” And I found a good case. I mean, went to Kinko’s. I didn’t even know to where to do this to make a poster. And it was terrible my first time, but I kept learning from other people. And there was this one conference where I signed up to be mentored by another female radiologist.

So, they had my CV. I’m telling her about some of the things that I’m doing on my own. And my program director happened to be at that same meeting, and didn’t have the best interpersonal skills, but me and this other physician are clearly in the middle of a meeting. But he just walks right up and says, “Hello.” And so, I introduced them. And this new friend of mine, this new mentor said, “Oh my gosh, you must be so proud of her. Look at what she’s done. Look at all of these things that she’s accomplished. She’s such a go-getter. And just look at this CV. Look what she’s doing. And you must be so proud. She’s such a tribute to your department.” He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah, we still need to turn her into a radiologist.”

Not very encouraging, right?

I know. I know. But that gives you, I guess, an example of the types of personalities I was dealing with in residency.

Right. Right.

Again, I don’t make things easy for myself. If I see something that I think that can be better or I think it’s important enough to be fixed, I’m going to try to do something about it. And even though I did choose my battles, I think I managed to improve things for my class and the classes after us. And up until my class was a fourth year, we always voted on chief resident. So, I think I was a shoe in. I’d go to bat for my fellow residents. But that year they decided, he said, “I’m the one who has to work with the chief residents. So, I’m just going to pick one.”

When, as previously, it had been voted on?

Oh yes. For always.

Oh.

Until that time.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, you felt like that was targeted at you?

Oh, very much so. I guess they were trying to turn me into a radiologist, I guess.

Wow. You made reference to going to bat for patient care. And do you have examples of when you’ve had to do that?

I’ve been in a couple of different private practices over the course of my career. And because of my background, I’ve been brought in under the guise of, “Hey, can you revamp this department? Can you improve our workflow? Can you bring us into the present, I guess?” And oftentimes, I’ve found that to be a dirty lie. Nobody wants somebody to come in and tell them how to improve. Sometimes, they just want the rubber stamp of approval.

Right.

And in one of the private practices I was at, everyone looked to the breast center as the jewel of the hospital. It tends to be a money maker. It’s always pretty, there’s always nice art.

Right. Very patient facing.

Yes. Very patient facing. And I joined a group where I was the only woman. It was a midsize private practice, just a bunch of men and me. And so, I was in the breast center, and it was quite interesting just how vastly different my older white male colleagues were treated versus me. The tech center was right next to the radiology reading room, and people have got stories to tell. They get loud, and I’m not one to raise my voice. I’m not one to create a commotion or anything. If I told people, “Hey, could keep it down? I can’t hear myself dictate.” If that didn’t happen, I would close the reading room door. And that turned into me being difficult, me shutting them out. On the other hand, when one of my male colleagues who had a couple children, his wife was a stay at home mom, he would go to the break room and take naps in the recliner.

And for him, they would tiptoe around the reading room. They would tiptoe around the break room. But for me, if I closed the door, that was wildly inappropriate. I would get tone policed. “Oh, she made me cry. She did this. She did that. She’s so difficult.” On the other hand, these same technologists would always bring me their imaging to read because they knew I would go that extra level, that I was very detail oriented, and would really take the time to do this. So, when it affected them, they wanted that level of quality and detail. But telling a technologist to, “Hey, that’s just not quite the standard of care. I needed to go back and take another image. Hey, I need you to do this a different way. Hey, I need you to do what I asked you in the first place.” That was me being difficult and disruptive and whatnot.

But when it came to their own personal imaging.

Yes. Yes. Then, it was different. There was a lot going on in that department. There was a revolving door of higher up admin, and everybody wanted to make their bones in the breast center. Everybody wanted to change up the schedule, shove more patients in, do this, do that, and ignore some pretty significant recurring issues. We have certain rules in place for safety. For a procedure that goes to surgery, a radiologist has to review it, has to approve it to put it on the schedule. You don’t just throw an outside case at a radiologist and expect them to do it on the fly. But anyway, I show up one day, and the very first case has been worked up at an outside facility, and a couple of steps have been skipped. And so I said, “Well, no, we need to do this. We need to do that. Please go get me this image. Do this.”

And then, when you look at things a little closer, I realized that the wrong area had been biopsied. So technically, this patient had an incomplete workup. And so then, I called the surgeon. I talked to the patient. There’s tears, there’s cursing. People are upset that I’m canceling a surgery case, but this was the right thing for the patient. The patient had not been completely worked up. We may have been missing a cancer. This is something that could have had some pretty serious consequences down the road. And it could have probably, if I kept going, this probably would’ve been a lawsuit. I probably saved the hospital a great deal of trouble.

Then, the very next case, similar situation. A radiologist had not approved this case. Some scheduler or admin or somebody decided, “The surgeon wants this, so we’re going to do it.” No, I have to do this. And there are reasons why we do things the way we do so that an appropriate standard of care is achieved. And again, something was wrong. It would’ve been wrong with me to continue. So again, I’m calling the surgeon. I’m calling, I’m talking to the patient and saying, “No, this cannot go on. We have to do this. We have to biopsy this other area. This has not been completely worked up. We’re doing something prematurely, and I’m not going to send you to surgery to having general anesthesia for something that-“

Right. Until we have the full picture, right?

Yes. Yes. I’m just trying to do the right thing by you. So anyway, it was a terrible day, but we get through it. And around 5, 5:30, I’m the only one in the department there. Everybody else has left. I’m just sitting there trying to go through the carnage and try to catch up and read this case. And then,, all of a sudden my door just flings open, and it’s the CMO of the hospital. And I was very shocked to see him. Surprised he knew where the breast center was and where my reading room was. So, he comes in, he shuts the door, he pulls his chair in front of the door. He’s between me and the door. And I was sitting there, I was dictating. And I thought, “Well, what’s he doing here?” And he just says, “I heard you had a difficult day.” And I thought, “Well, has he heard about these cases? Is he here to troubleshoot what’s happening? And maybe what steps in the procedure were circumvented?”

And this person is not a radiologist?

No. He was a prior surgeon. He doesn’t do breast imaging. He has no idea what I really do. He sat down, and he said, “Oh, you had a difficult day.” And I thought maybe he wants to hear where we could have done better. I thought we were troubleshooting. So, I start telling him about the cases. He goes, “No, no. I heard you canceled cases. I heard that you’ve been badmouthing the department. I hear that you’ve been difficult. You’ve been demanding. And you know what? We’re busy. You knew the schedule. You don’t cancel patients. Canceling patients is not the answer, and you’re difficult to work with.” And he just kind of went on. And here I was thinking I’ve done the right thing for patients. There’s no doubt in my mind that I did the right thing for both of these patients, that I helped them, I helped the department, I helped the hospital.

This was the right thing to do. And instead of giving me a pat on the back or saying, “Hey, thanks for getting us out of a very precarious situation,” here I was being blamed. The only thing that he could see was the number on the board. Hey, a surgeon called and was upset and I ruined their schedule. And he goes, “I don’t think you need to work here anymore.” And I was just shocked. I was like, “What do you mean? Are you firing me? First off, I don’t work for you.” But I was just shocked. I mean, it had been such a traumatic day. And then, this person has come in and just starts threatening me. And I said, “I disagree with that strongly. One of my colleagues is working in the ER. You know what? Let me call and let me get him up here, and we can talk about this some more.”

He goes, “No. Do not touch that phone. Put that down. We are not doing this.” And I said, “What do you mean? Well fine, let’s get other radiologists in here.” And he goes, “No, we’re not doing this. You’ve been badmouthing the department, and you’ve been doing…” It was all just turned on me. I was the only reason anything had gone wrong in this department, and it was very threatening. Here I am in this empty department, in this dark reading room, with him between me and the door. And I don’t even quite recall what else happened, but he finally left. There wasn’t even a lock on the door. I just shoved a chair under the lock and started calling my fellow radiologists and telling them this crazy thing happened to me. And again, they’re a bunch of guys. I don’t think they’d ever had that experience before.

And it was almost brushed off a little bit. Like, “You know what? I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. We’ll talk about it. You know What? Don’t worry, he can’t fire you. He can’t even say who we put up in this department. The contract is with our group.” Again, I’m the one who pushed it a little and I said, “This was incredibly wrong. This was unprofessional. This was so far out of the norm. Something needs to happen about this.” And I pushed our radiologists into, “We need to talk to a lawyer. This is really incredibly wrong. This is harassment. This is intimidation.” I thought I was fired without due process. I didn’t know what was going on. And none of it even addressed the lapses in our workflow that led to those two cases happening. It was all just, I was the problem.

And what a threatening physical situation to be in.

Yes. Yes.

In a dark room with the door blocked. I think sometimes, men don’t realize just how threatening that is as a woman.

Oh, for sure. For sure. I mean, when someone is telling you, “Don’t even pick up that phone. Don’t you dare pick up that phone.” And when I say, “Whoa, let’s step back. Let’s talk about this.” “No, we’re not doing that.”

Wow.

So I mean, we did end up having a phone call with our group lawyer. Me, the president of the group, and our office manager. So, she and I were the only females on this call. And everybody listened to what I had to say and what happened. And they were just like, “Well, we can’t really do anything about it. It’s a he said, she said. Yeah, we’ll think about it.” And then I never heard anything again.

Wow.

The only person, the other woman, she called me and said, “Are you okay? I’m so sorry and shocked, and I can’t believe this happened. This is so wrong.” But everybody else just brushed it off. And I very much got the feeling that if I pushed it any further, I would lose, well, what little support I had from the group because we can’t do anything that threatens our contract and our jobs. So, it was something that I had to back away from because I clearly didn’t have true allyship.

Do you think this kind of experience was unique to this particular practice?

I mean, I’ve had some issues at every practice I’ve been at. There are a lot of people who are okay with the status quo. Women are a minority in radiology. And I’ve been in groups where, again, I’ve been the minority. Sometimes, I’ve been the token woman, the only person of color, and I think there are a lot of people who can’t experienced what we have. And so, it doesn’t affect them. It doesn’t relate to them. They can’t relate to our experience. And so, why upset something that’s working for them?

Right. You’ve told some overt stories. Are there more subtle ways that you’ve seen this?

Oh, yes. Actually in my current practice. I’ve been around a while. I’m very well qualified to do what I do. I was in a reading room. It was myself and an older male colleague who had been at this practice for several decades, actually. So, the two of us are in this reading room. Were just trying to get the work done at the end of the day. And a female technologist comes in and is all shocked to see me sitting there. “Who are you? I don’t know you.” And then, I try to be friendly, say who I am, and it turned into a third degree interrogation.

It was me and Barbara Walters, and she was trying to make me cry like Julie Andrews. And she wanted to know where I’ve been, what have I done? Really? No. “So, where are you from?” I said, “I’m from here.” “No, no, no. Where are you from? Where are you from?” And “Oh, you mean where are my parents from? Why do I have melanin? I mean, that’s what you’re asking?” And then, I get into that a little bit, and she goes, “Oh, your English is so good. You don’t even have an accent.”

So, I mean, little things like this happen all the time. It’s almost comical.

Right. Have you had any good examples of allyship, or where you felt particularly supported?

I think I took it upon myself to widen my own network. Even as a resident, I said, this can’t be all there is. It can’t be like this everywhere. When I started going to meetings, to talking to other radiologists, to other women radiologists, a lot of these social media forums have been so incredibly helpful because when a couple of those things happened to me, I felt so alone. I said, “Wow, I’ve had some version of this experience at every place I’ve been at. Is it me? Am I doing something? How does this keep happening to me?” And again, I’m surrounded by mostly men. So, they’re not experiencing it. What am I doing that’s bringing this about? But in some of these online groups, I’ve seen so many people post some eerily similar stories. And immediately, 20 minutes later, you’ll see that so many people have responded. And it’s sad and it’s shocking, but at least you know that you’re not alone.

And I think through this, you find other people who can give you the benefit of their experience and help give you some of that mentorship I wish I had had at those times. I think that’s how you change things. I think that’s why it’s so important that we’re doing something like this. So, I’m so glad that you’re doing this project because that’s how you change things. It’s uncomfortable and it’s difficult to talk about and it’s uncomfortable to hear about, I’m sure. But these uncomfortable things have to be dragged into the light. We have to display the facts. We have to say this is what’s happening and we need to change that. And I think that’s increasing diversity, increasing our presence at the table.

You could be an advertisement for the podcast. I think you just summed up the goal, right?

I’d be happy to.

Right? I think, like you said, people, even well-meaning people are oblivious. They just don’t know that this is happening. And I think the comment about being alone is really important, too. First of all, we work in a pretty isolated way as radiologists, right? Often alone in a room. So, we don’t even necessarily see our partners day to day. And then, you find yourself the only woman in a practice or the only person of color in a practice. And then, you feel like does anyone else have this experience?

And I think whenever you get a group of women physicians, not just radiologists, together, everyone has these stories. And you realize it’s not you. It’s the system. It’s what we have allowed to continue unimpeded for so long. Several of the gentlemen that I spoke about, they were very entrenched in the system. I felt like I had no avenue for recourse. And maybe if I had somebody to talk to at that time, then maybe I could have handled it a different way.

So, I, in doing this, really feel like there’s a connection between these experiences in our professional lives and the experience of patients in the medical system. And I’m curious if you have any thoughts on that or experiences that relate to how your own experience informs how you deal with patients or how we can all learn about how to make healthcare more equitable, more comfortable for patients.

I do think patients appreciate seeing… Like I said, I grew up where I walked into a room, I didn’t see people who looked like me. I can’t tell you how many times people have said, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re a woman.” A few weeks ago I was doing an HSG. And at the end, the patient grabbed my hand and said, “Thank you so much for making something that I was so petrified about. I could not sleep all night, but you put me at ease.”

And I don’t know that she would’ve had that same experience with some of my partners. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we stick it out and go through as much as we do. I don’t know that patients realize how much physicians go to bat for them and advocate for them and do so, I mean, at their own detriment.

Right.

I didn’t win friends fighting for a lot of these things. But I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind that everything I’ve done, I did it for a good reason, and I would do it again. And it all comes back to patient safety and quality of care and improving things for the next woman who happens to walk in my shoes.

Have you been at any practices where another woman has come on board since?

Yes, actually. So, this was a while ago. I was on the west coast, and I joined a practice where whenever you join a new place, promises are made. You’re promised the world, and you get there and things are so different. And I was there for two days and nothing worked. And I went to the board and I said, “We can do better. We can do better. Here are my thoughts of how we can improve it.” And so for the next, when two more women were hired on, I took them under my wing. And to this day, I’m still extremely good friends with them. I was their first call whenever anything didn’t work and, “What do I do next?” And I’ve gotten phone calls of somebody crying in a parking lot, and I’m glad that they had my number. I’m glad that they had somebody to call.

Yeah. Yeah. Building that community of people that you can rely on.

Oh, a hundred percent. It makes a world of difference. Just again, knowing that you’re not alone, that there’s somebody in your corner who truly will go to bat for you.

Sometimes the challenges come from other women. I know you spoke about that a little bit with regards to some of the technologists that you’d work with. Do you have other instances of that that stand out?

Yes. At one of my practices, I thought, “Hey, this is going to be better. A few women, there’s a few women here.” But I think it goes back to everyone’s just trying to get by. A lot of people are trying to make the best of a bad situation, or just they’re okay with the status quo. They’re okay, so they’re not going to stick their neck out for you. Or there’s the type of person who is like, “Hey, I had to go through it, so you have to go through it. It was hard for me. Well, good luck.” And I’m very much not that kind of person.

So, it’s always, if I see something that’s wrong, I truly want to make it better. I want to change it. And so, I went to this group thinking, “Oh, surely, hey, there’s another woman. One woman is a token, two is a majority, and three, that’s a voice. That’s where you can really start getting things done and start supporting each other and amplifying voices.” And that only works if all three of you think the same way. So, if somebody else is happy with the status quo and thinks that you need to get knocked around, as well, it’s just that lack of allyship is truly sad.

Yeah. Do you have a specific example of that?

Going back to my talk, or whatever you want to call it, my altercation with the CMO, it was a female surgeon who called him and complained instead of talking to me and saying, “Hey, thank you for saving me. Hey, thank you for your attention to detail and quality of care. Thank you for doing what you can.” They turned around and did what they could to “get me in trouble, to push me out.”

Your comment about three is a voice. It’s really interesting. And how can we do better at helping each other navigate these things?

I read that years ago. It was an article in a business journal. It was a woman who had, again, been in a male dominated field. And she was, when walking in the boardroom, one woman, you’re the token woman. And I looked back and I said, you know what? I think I was that token woman. I wasn’t listened to. I would bring things up in board meetings, and people didn’t listen. Or somebody else later on would say the same thing and all of a sudden, they’d had value. I went to the next practice saying, “Okay, there’s another woman there. Maybe it’ll be different. Okay, we’re still a minority.” I didn’t have somebody who would listen, who would amplify that voice. And I think there’s a lot of ways we can support each other. In a meeting, when one woman says something, if that’s a good idea, jump in, give her credit, and support her.

Promote that and do what you can to advance that. And I think looking out for the people coming in, really addressing problems, and calling out things as you see them. When there’s such a blatant difference in how male radiologists are treated versus how female radiologists are treated, step back and acknowledge that. Don’t allow people to push that under the rug because you let that escalate. You let sit there and fester instead of cutting it out like the cancer that it is. It just keeps getting worse and worse. I mean, again, I’ve never raised my voice. I don’t yell.

I don’t scream obscenities. I’m not throwing paper or pens, I’m not breaking computer screens. But I’ve seen male radiologists do that repeatedly in multiple practices, and there’s never been any consequence. So, it’s partly supporting your fellow female radiologists and not allowing the continued bad behavior of others. And also, just being a sounding board and listening. Once I found my group of people, and a lot of them are online people, it’s so refreshing to have these varied experiences brought to the table. And I think we’re all stronger for it.

Did you encounter any obstacles or feel like you were treated differently in your interactions with physicians from other specialties or that you consult with?

You see different interactions when you call the ER sometimes. The older male president of the group is treated with respect. And when you’re called, or if you call to question an order, it’s like, “All right.” And I think you see that with a lot of specialties, unfortunately.

Yeah. Have there been opportunities for advancement within your groups that you’ve worked in?

I think it’s what you make of it. I think if you want more, you can do more. You can. And if you have the time and the energy and the desire to, I think there’s many opportunities for any radiologist. And I would say expand your search. That was invaluable to me as a resident. When I felt like I wasn’t getting what I needed out of my residency, I felt I wasn’t being heard. I looked further. I looked into our specialty societies. I looked into different avenues. I looked into trying to do research and collaborating with other radiologists in other fields or other specialties or other universities. And I did it in that way. I was also, in several groups, I’ve been at the management level, and I’ve tried to change things from that end. And I think the amount of progress depends in large part on the culture of the group, how your voice is perceived and if people actually listen to you.

So, I did as much as I could at that level. I think there’s a lot of opportunity out there, depending on what somebody’s goal is. I know we’re we’re on several of the same groups and we see these posts of, gosh, just last week there were so many posts about, “I’m really unhappy in my job and what do you think? Should I leave?” And there’s been a recent tweet from a basketball player, Simmons, that’s been going around. And he says, “A bottle of water, it costs 50 cents at a grocery store, $2 at a movie theater, $6 on an airplane. It’s the same water. What changed? What changed its value? You know what? It’s the location. If you do feel undervalued, and you’re not being respected and your talents aren’t being respected somewhere, then you know what? It’s time to move. It’s time to find a place that works better for you.”

And honestly, that’s what I’ve done. If I got to a point where I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere, I giving more than I ever received, if I felt like I was stuck, I’m one of the first people to step back, reassess, and say, “Okay, it’s time to kind of pick up and leave.” Because radiology is not all that I am, and no one should ever feel stuck. And there are other places that will value you and your expertise and your passion. And I think you just need to get out there and find that. That’s what I’ve tried to do. You get to a point where a job is not worth your mental health or your sanity. You’re there for your patients. And if there are too many obstacles to taking care of your patients, it’s time to find something else.

Let’s talk about the wage gap. Have you experienced pay disparity? Or seen it happen to others?

Oh, I have. I have, unfortunately. And I think this is also where having a mentor helps because my very first practice, when I signed my contract, I was told, “Okay, you’re getting more than so and so. I don’t want you to say anything because you negotiated. You walked away at first, and I increased the deal or whatever. So don’t say anything.” And, well, I guess just the way I was raised, you don’t really talk about politics, religion, or money, right? So I was like, “Okay, well, of course I’m not going to talk about money.” But after having seen this in a couple practices, when I got to the management level, and I realized they were trying to bring in a male radiologist and give them a much better deal than I ever had, a shorter time to partner, a higher starting rate, I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

“How is that so different from me?” “Oh, he has experience.” I had experience, too. So what is the difference between me and him? What is the difference right here? There is none. The only difference is he’s a guy. So, I think people should talk about it. Again, it comes back to this podcast. It’s about talking about the facts, dragging these uncomfortable things, these unjust things, into the light and don’t allow them to hide and fester. And again, the more I’ve talked to other radiologists, this is something that happens in academics and in private practice. And it’s because people don’t talk about it, and it’s because they tell you, “Oh, you’re not supposed to. You shouldn’t be talking about it.” Well, you should give people a fair deal. That’s what it comes down to.

Tunnel of Truth is partially funded by the Washington State Radiological Society’s Committee on Women and Diversity. We are also a proud recipient of a 2022 American College of Radiology chapter grant. If you’d like to share your story on this podcast, visit our website, tunneloftruth.com. These stories can be difficult to tell. We create a comfortable recording environment and can keep your identity private should you wish to maintain an anonymity.