“When they ask for my advice, I always tell my trainees ‘Never be mediocre,’” says Professor Nick Curzen, the President-Elect of the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society (BCIS). As the Chair of Interventional Cardiology at the University of Southampton, practising cardiologist, author of over 240 PubMed papers and editor of 4 textbooks, he clearly lives by this maxim, and I am hopeful he will impart some of his secrets to success for those of us who are more ‘mediocre’, as well as answer some of the key questions currently being asked about interventional cardiology.

We start by talking about taking the helm of the BCIS. “It’s very exciting,” Professor Curzen begins. “The society is responsible for advising those engaged in intervention in the UK, ensuring there is a fertile environment for training and that we are ready to face up to the challenges that this rapidly evolving speciality throws up at us. And there is the ongoing gender difference in intervention which we have started openly discussing, and this is a challenge I want to take and run with – there will be a working group to look at ways to change this.”

One of the reasons intervention is often felt to be unattractive to women is …