Cardiology vs Heme onc. Help needed!!!!!

House9211 said:

Hi I am a first year IM resident and it is time for me to make a decision for going into a subspecialty now. I have worked in both the departments now and it is decision time for me. I love the subject of cardiology but in practice the way it is driven and the future of it scares me the most, especially when you are willing to put in the effort to work long hours and at the end of the day you dont get the rewards back. So help from the fellows in cardiology and the practicing physicians in cardiology would be appreciated.

Heme Onc also interests me in a manner in which it is so naive and there is so much to do and learn in it. Although the clinical outcomes are not so good. in terms of the compensation if you see its almost close to cardiology with good hours.

So what should a resident do now, go into something that is saturated like cardiology , work long hours , not get paid good , or go into a virgin field make decent money and live a good life.

I am extremely confused at this stage now.

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House9211 said:

Hi I am a first year IM resident and it is time for me to make a decision for going into a subspecialty now. I have worked in both the departments now and it is decision time for me. I love the subject of cardiology but in practice the way it is driven and the future of it scares me the most, especially when you are willing to put in the effort to work long hours and at the end of the day you dont get the rewards back. So help from the fellows in cardiology and the practicing physicians in cardiology would be appreciated.

Heme Onc also interests me in a manner in which it is so naive and there is so much to do and learn in it. Although the clinical outcomes are not so good. in terms of the compensation if you see its almost close to cardiology with good hours.

So what should a resident do now, go into something that is saturated like cardiology , work long hours , not get paid good , or go into a virgin field make decent money and live a good life.

I am extremely confused at this stage now.

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P Diddy said:

I also think you won't 'get paid good' in cardiology, so you should probably go into heme/onc, which is not as interesting to you, has great hours, and is immune to Medicare reimbursement cuts.

p diddy

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P Diddy said:

I also think you won't 'get paid good' in cardiology, so you should probably go into heme/onc, which is not as interesting to you, has great hours, and is immune to Medicare reimbursement cuts.

p diddy

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darkelven29 said:

I'm a MS4, but have been thinking about Cards vs. GI vs. hem/onc for a while and rotated them as MS3/4....

Both cards and hem/onc are saturated fields, neither is virgin land. GI is a saturated field clinically but research is more "virgin" compared to the other two.

Cardiologists have to be available 24 hrs because of emergencies, so someone (cards fellows) has to take call. Once you finish fellowship, there are sub-subspecialties that are less demanding with nice lifestyle, especially if working outpatient only or as imaging consultant. For me the questions is "do you like taking care of patients where life and death may happen in matter of seconds and fast decisions/actions have to be made right away?"

Hem-onc have long hours because of patient volume and decreasing reiumbursement. They rarely have emergencies that require skills outside of a hospitalist. So they rarely need to be in house 24/7, although most academic centers do have a night hem/onc fellow. For me, the questions is "do you like to read up on latest clinical trials and working with very sick patients who still want to fight cancer?"

Honestly, you should decide based on diseases/patients/procedures/meds you like, because either one will have long hours, but lifestyle can be flexible based on your desired practice setting/career direction. If you want nice lifestyle, go into ID, rheum, or endocrine.

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DrVanNostran said:

For busy centers, ID is brutal (on the inpatient side). As for H/O, there are plenty of opportunities, especially for grads 6-8 years for now.

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icaruswalks said:

How so?

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Instatewaiter said:

You get like 5 to 10 consults a day and each consult takes like 2 hours to go through all the culture data etc. ID consults take forever to do.

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Bostonredsox said:

It all depends on your shop and the 'consult trigger finger' on your hospitalists. I'm on Heme/Onc this block and I did 11 consults today. Freaking brutal.

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