Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawkter
What? Doing interventional cards means you apply for two fellowships and put in seven years. I'm saying put in 6 years and apply for one interventional fellowship by making IM plus cards 5 years combined.
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I think it's easy to say 7 years is too long as a student since it seems so far away. But a surgeon I spoke with who trained a total (with 2 years research) of 9 years says he does not regret in the least the amount of training he did. I'm sure not all feel that way but I agree with that opinion. It doesn't seem as a student that interventional cards should require 7 years after med school since all they seem to do is send a cath into the coronaries and put in stents. But I think we only think that because we just don't know all that is involved with the field.
Cardiology is a huge field in and of itself. It has interventional, EP (which is mostly procedures), imaging, inpatient, outpatient, etc. It's larger and more diverse than lots of other subspecialities in IM out there. Perhaps in the future when/if cards becomes even more complex that it requires more training then programs will start to pop up that will expedite training. But I think that limit is around 8 years (the length of things like endovascular neurosurgery/interventional neuro - another field that if you look at it from the student perspective doesn't seem like it should take that long but the fellows don't complain when you talk to them).
it is also my opinion that if a 3rd/4th year student is dead set on something very specialized like interventional cards then that student is very naive. No way that student can make a informed decision like that so early in his/her training.