Average Age

[spyyder]

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I am curious what the average age of a Interventional Cardiologist. I will graduate when I am 29 (plus 7 years training = 36 before first job 😱). I am just trying to get an idea of what is the average age of the cards guys out there?

 

[Larry Renal]

If one were to go straight through, they would finish medical school at 25-26, then be done with training at 32/33. I don't think three years should make a big difference on your career goals. Don't pick what you do from age 36-65 based on the duration of training. That's what someone told me when I was considering specialites. Plus, when you're a fellow, you can still live off your salary and moonlight for extra cash.

Go for it.

J

 

[dragonfly99]

I agree.
Especially if you are male, there is really no issue at that age.
You can moonlight during fellowship if you need extra money.

 

[Studebug]

I agree.
Especially if you are male, there is really no issue at that age.
You can moonlight during fellowship if you need extra money.

Help me understand the Especially if you are male.

I am female and will finish general cards completely at 48. I just want to make sure I am not missing anything. I plan to work or moonlight my tail off because my children will be long gone and my husband works a lot too. I am not happy sitting at home and golf is not my fortay. I would rather work when my dependent mothering years have passed. Maybe my wiring is just screwed up.

Is there some issue with malpractice insurance when you reach a certain age. I know several doctors (not cards) that work part-time really late in life. I was thinking that if I couldn't do interven. cards or even non-invasive (with my Depends on) that I might tune the IM skills and drop back to that part-time until I hit the grave.

 

[gutonc]

Help me understand the Especially if you are male.

I think HER point was that, if you are a woman and want to have a family (and don't already have one when you start this process), it will be tougher to start a family as an older cards fellow if you are the one giving birth to the child than the one fathering it.

If you already have a family that will be well on their way to college, this will not be nearly as big of an issue.

As an example, of the dozen-ish cards fellows at my institution, 3 are women. All are single and have no kids. Of the men, all but 3 have kids (one is separated geographically from his wife because of training, one is single, the other is gay). Of the 10 hem/onc fellows OTOH, 4 are women, 1 of whom is single-ish, two are pregnant, one has 2 kids and all but one of the men have kids.

If you go straight through in cards, it will be as hard as in gen surg to have a family. Women will take the brunt of this. If you are a non-trad, this will likely be less relevant to you.

 

[dragonfly99]

I think HER point was that, if you are a woman and want to have a family (and don't already have one when you start this process), it will be tougher to start a family as an older cards fellow if you are the one giving birth to the child than the one fathering it.

If you already have a family that will be well on their way to college, this will not be nearly as big of an issue.

As an example, of the dozen-ish cards fellows at my institution, 3 are women. All are single and have no kids. Of the men, all but 3 have kids (one is separated geographically from his wife because of training, one is single, the other is gay). Of the 10 hem/onc fellows OTOH, 4 are women, 1 of whom is single-ish, two are pregnant, one has 2 kids and all but one of the men have kids.

If you go straight through in cards, it will be as hard as in gen surg to have a family. Women will take the brunt of this. If you are a non-trad, this will likely be less relevant to you.

Thanks guton.
That is precisely what I meant.
And yes, I am female.
Also, I think that as a female applicant to cardiology who is youngish (i.e. hasn't had a family yet) there are certain faculty who interview you who will be curious about your plans for family and/or marriage and some will even ask you about this. Some programs likely don't want any women who might plan on any kid(s) during fellowship, and some aren't so hot on having women in general because of some theoretical possibility of this happening, though I don't personally know any female cards fellow who has had any babies during the clinical years of her fellowship.

I don't know what it would be like trying to get interventional cards in your mid 40's as a female. There are probably so few of those type applicants (considering only 18% or so of cards fellows are women) that you'd be considered a totally unknown quantity to them. Depending on the program, that might make you interesting and desirable for them (particularly as your kids are already grown) or undesirable if they prefer younger folks who will be in practice longer or just do not prefer women for some reason besides being afraid one will get pregnant during training.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

I think HER point was that, if you are a woman and want to have a family (and don't already have one when you start this process), it will be tougher to start a family as an older cards fellow if you are the one giving birth to the child than the one fathering it.

If you already have a family that will be well on their way to college, this will not be nearly as big of an issue.

As an example, of the dozen-ish cards fellows at my institution, 3 are women. All are single and have no kids. Of the men, all but 3 have kids (one is separated geographically from his wife because of training, one is single, the other is gay). Of the 10 hem/onc fellows OTOH, 4 are women, 1 of whom is single-ish, two are pregnant, one has 2 kids and all but one of the men have kids.

If you go straight through in cards, it will be as hard as in gen surg to have a family. Women will take the brunt of this. If you are a non-trad, this will likely be less relevant to you.

Is cards more time-consuming than heme/onc?

 

[Studebug]

Thanks guton.
That is precisely what I meant.
And yes, I am female.
Also, I think that as a female applicant to cardiology who is youngish (i.e. hasn't had a family yet) there are certain faculty who interview you who will be curious about your plans for family and/or marriage and some will even ask you about this. Some programs likely don't want any women who might plan on any kid(s) during fellowship, and some aren't so hot on having women in general because of some theoretical possibility of this happening, though I don't personally know any female cards fellow who has had any babies during the clinical years of her fellowship.

I don't know what it would be like trying to get interventional cards in your mid 40's as a female. There are probably so few of those type applicants (considering only 18% or so of cards fellows are women) that you'd be considered a totally unknown quantity to them. Depending on the program, that might make you interesting and desirable for them (particularly as your kids are already grown) or undesirable if they prefer younger folks who will be in practice longer or just do not prefer women for some reason besides being afraid one will get pregnant during training.

Thanks DragonFly. I knew you were female from a previous post. I completely understand the "dynamics" that can occur by working in a predominately male environment. I am leaving a Chem Eng career so I have heard just about everything a male can dish out. My favorite was many years ago when my boss told me to my face (while pregnant) "I just want you to know that I think women should stay home." I just smiled and said "Thank you for sharing your opinion." Now what did I think silently...1. You are not my husband so I don't give a flying flip what you think. 2. This is my life, my baby, and my career- none of your business. 3. I bet you wouldn't say that in front of a human resources rep! Now that lovely representation of management is a Vice President in our company. I just let that junk run off my back like water off a duck. I am pretty much numb to it at this point.

Your thoughts were in line with what I hope will happen. I can bring a different perspective (being female), maturity of life, stability of a long term marriage, and the fire of a new grad. I can understand why a demanding career like cardiology would raise concerns about child bearing females. The exhaustion of being pregnant, maternity leave, possibly family leave, all the demands of sick kids, special events, snow school closings, what to do with them in the summer and then risk of having an unhealthy child can cause a female to have a hard time focusing 110% on the demand of her patients. I realize my age will be a negative but I am hoping I can overshadowed it with being able to focus completely on my new career. I get pregnant at that age I will ask someone to shoot me.

Is an interventionalist spot achieved by the whole match process? Do you have to wait until the end of the 3 years or can you do it earlier (peace of mind)?

younger folks who will be in practice longer.. In regards to this comment, what age is it reasonable to practice? Is this dictated by malpractice?

 

[dragonfly99]

There is a Match for interventional. Usually it's a 1 year fellowship, but sometimes two. It used to not be an official Match, but now it is. I think you apply a year ahead of time (so beginning of your 3rd year of fellowship in general cards?).

I think there are places where you can (officially or unofficially) get a combined general cards+interventional spot. Or a lot of places hold back a couple interventional spots for people in their own cards fellowship, so if you like interventional then I'd go for a cards fellowship that has an interventional fellowship with multiple spots (gives you the best odds to stay there + do interventional).

p.s. You go girl doing engineering + kids + medicine!!! And your ex-boss was a jerk-off. I've never had anyone say something that blatant to me...

 

[doc20]

not to be really discrimantory here but umm for someone to land a cards spot who might only practice for lets say 20 years of life, versus a young person graduating at 35 and would have a practice span of 40 years, wouldnt it be wasting lot of resources which we already lack in this country?
I mean we already rationing health care sometimes things needs to be rationed or people need to let go for the greater good of society!

 

[tibor75]

Since programs fill their spots via match and therefore have no idea how their classes end up, it may make some sense for a program, particularly one that is small, not to rank highly too many female of child bearing age. Especially if fellows are integral to the running of the program (which is good as a fellow should be in a program where they are valued) If a program takes 6 fellows per year, and 3 are out at the same time for leave, that will put them in a spot.

You can call it sexist, but the fact is that a new mother will take 4-6 weeks off, whereas a new father will take 1-2 weeks off.

The best way to solve the problem is to mandate that new parents, no matter the gender, get equal time off after a child.

 

[tibor75]

not to be really discrimantory here but umm for someone to land a cards spot who might only practice for lets say 20 years of life, versus a young person graduating at 35 and would have a practice span of 40 years, wouldnt it be wasting lot of resources which we already lack in this country?
I mean we already rationing health care sometimes things needs to be rationed or people need to let go for the greater good of society!

True, but a fellowship doesn't really care about that. They want solid fellows first of all. I'm sure a program gets their own faculty from their fellowship, but very few poeple stay at the same location forever. And frankly most poeple end up in private practice anyway and of course most fellowships are by nature academic programs.

 

[dragonfly99]

tibor,
The situation that you describe, of having 3 out of 6 fellows being female and all of them being out on maternity leave at the same time would never, ever happen. For one thing, I have never, ever seen ANY cardiology program that is even close to 50% female. Also, it would be such a huge improbability that the 3 women, if they even existed, would decide to become pregnant and be able to become pregnant all at the same time, and be out on maternity leave at the same time. It would just never happen. Also, it is just unfair and unwarranted to assume that just because someone is female and happens to have a uterus that the person will decide to become pregnant during fellowship. For the vast majority of the women, the chance of them ever becoming pregnant during cardiology fellowship is close to zero...most do not want to have a baby during cardiology fellowship, for obvious reasons. Some are not even married, and even the ones who are married usually do not have any desire to have a baby during fellowship, because it isn't really a very good time. Actually, out of all of the female cardiology fellows I have known, I have only seen one who ever had a baby during fellowship, and it was during 3rd year, which for that fellowship included little or no call anyway...

It always seems funny to me that some of these cardiology fellowships just don't like to take women, yet they will take other trainees with very obvious liabilities that will affect their ability to function as fellows. For example, I have seen fellowships with multiple, multiple male fellows who were very obese...some of the ones I saw would definitely not be able to run to a code, etc. because honestly they were too large. They would have to take the elevator, not the stairs. That is just one example of something that is deemed acceptable, while being a women is somehow undesirable at some of these programs...all because of some theoretical risk of maternity leave that the vast majority of the time never even happens anyway.

 

[tibor75]

Speaking of obesity.... I would never take an obese person for any job I was hiring for. I consider it a character flaw of the highest order, particularly in medicine.

 

[P Diddy]

tibor,
The situation that you describe, of having 3 out of 6 fellows being female and all of them being out on maternity leave at the same time would never, ever happen. ...For the vast majority of the women, the chance of them ever becoming pregnant during cardiology fellowship is close to zero...most do not want to have a baby during cardiology fellowship, for obvious reasons. Some are not even married, and even the ones who are married usually do not have any desire to have a baby during fellowship, because it isn't really a very good time.

however unlikely the situation, and however unfair the stigma, program coordinators do think like this, so applicants should be aware and ask fellows at their interviews not only about the 'official' policy, but also about the program's viewpoint toward pregnancy during fellowship. the concern lies not only in the time to be taken off after maternity leave, but also performance AFTER the birth. while certainly not universal, priorities do change when one has a newborn, and the quality of work can suffer. pregnancy also affects rotation responsibilities; a pregnant woman can't be in the cath lab.

as far as the probability of multiple pregnancies, I know of one program with ~ 1/2 their clinical fellows female, with two of those fellows currently pregnant and one who had their child prior to beginning fellowship. I have also heard of entering fellows with newborns being asked to take a research year rather than start clinical responsibilities due to the above concerns.

given these concerns, I agree with tibor that men should be given the same amount of paternity leave as women. then there would not be a selection bias away from women, since men would be just as likely to take leave. in fact, selection bias might even favor women, since as you mentioned, many women choose not to have children during fellowship; men, in my experience, have no such qualms.

p diddy

 

[dragonfly99]

I agree that men should get more paternity leave...then they would have to help with getting up at 2 a.m. to take care of the squalling baby...LOL!

Your anecdotal experience with female cardiology fellows is 100% the opposite of mine (I know several female cards fellows, none who had a kid during fellowship or prior to it, though a couple who did after finishing). It looks like the ones you know have a 100% pregnancy rate. Interesting...

Anyway, it is kind of crazy that it's now socially OK for women to pursue higher education but then we do not really like for highly educated women to reproduce.
But I accept that is the deal while I am a trainee...I have no beef with it per se. I don't expect anyone else to do my work at any time.

I think people should ask about whatever factor(s) are important to them during the interview process, but it shouldn't be automatically assumed that a female is concerned with child bearing/child rearing during the 3 year fellowship. Not having kids or a spouse right now, and not planning any babies during fellowship, I really could have cared less what the daycare policies and maternity leave policy when I interviewed. I just wanted to know that I'm going to get equal opportunities to excel during my fellowship and that I wouldn't have a lot of false assumptions made about me due to being female. I feel like I picked the right fellowship in that regard.

 

[later2pharm]

Speaking of obesity.... I would never take an obese person for any job I was hiring for. I consider it a character flaw of the highest order, particularly in medicine.

so the fact their obesity may stem from a medical condition never crossed your mind?

 

[tibor75]

so the fact their obesity may stem from a medical condition never crossed your mind?

yeah, and how often does that happen? In other words, what percentage of fat people are that way because of a medical condition? 0.01%?

Give me a break with the "metabolism" excuse.

 

[Krisss17]

Help me understand the Especially if you are male.

I am female and will finish general cards completely at 48. I just want to make sure I am not missing anything. I plan to work or moonlight my tail off because my children will be long gone and my husband works a lot too. I am not happy sitting at home and golf is not my fortay. I would rather work when my dependent mothering years have passed. Maybe my wiring is just screwed up.

Is there some issue with malpractice insurance when you reach a certain age. I know several doctors (not cards) that work part-time really late in life. I was thinking that if I couldn't do interven. cards or even non-invasive (with my Depends on) that I might tune the IM skills and drop back to that part-time until I hit the grave.

You go girl!

 

[Krisss17]

not to be really discrimantory here but umm for someone to land a cards spot who might only practice for lets say 20 years of life, versus a young person graduating at 35 and would have a practice span of 40 years, wouldnt it be wasting lot of resources which we already lack in this country?
I mean we already rationing health care sometimes things needs to be rationed or people need to let go for the greater good of society!

There is no guarantee that someone younger is actually going to live longer or even want to do something for 40 years. I firmly believe that lifestyle (and how the resident takes care of themselves) and genetics can play a big role in how long one can actually work. You could finish your training in your 30s, not take care of yourself (obesity, smoking, drinking, etc.) and have familial issues where family members don't have a long life (heart disease, Alzheimers, cancer, etc), or you can be older, take care of yourself, and have a families with a long and productive lifespan. For myself, I'm not interested in interventional cardiology as much as noninterventional where I can actually have more of a long-term role in my patients' care.

Also, there is always the potential for burnout and the longer you work, the more it can become evident...

 

[dragonfly99]

krisss
not to be super argumentative,
but a lot of surgeons and interventional cardiologists pride themselves on following their patients long term. Some of these cards patients have been cathed multiple times and the person who knows their medical issues best is their interventional cardiologist. I don't plan to do interventional either, but I think the idea that they don't have any continuity of care with their patients isn't really right...at least not @my program.

I guess if you want to spend mega clinic time with your patients, though, heart failure/transplant would be better...

 

[doc20]

There is no guarantee that someone younger is actually going to live longer or even want to do something for 40 years. I firmly believe that lifestyle (and how the resident takes care of themselves) and genetics can play a big role in how long one can actually work. You could finish your training in your 30s, not take care of yourself (obesity, smoking, drinking, etc.) and have familial issues where family members don't have a long life (heart disease, Alzheimers, cancer, etc), or you can be older, take care of yourself, and have a families with a long and productive lifespan. For myself, I'm not interested in interventional cardiology as much as noninterventional where I can actually have more of a long-term role in my patients' care.

Also, there is always the potential for burnout and the longer you work, the more it can become evident...

blah blah blah.... thats what I got from the post
there is no guarantee of anything in Life!
I use big generalizations when I make my points not looking for blah exceptions
and people who love their work and specialties have no burnout, instead they become increasingly comfortable as they age just like a wine taste better with age they want to keep working more!
and um are you even a med student?

 

[ethat001]

Just to clarify, interventional is 7 years now (3 IM, 3 cards, 1 interventional) after med school. However, there's no guarantee they don't extend it to TWO years in the future (ie. total 8 years). There are new devices including percutaneous valves, mitral clips, atrial appendage occluder devices, etc -- that may extend the fellowship. EP is already 2 years.

BUT-- another 1 or 2 years is totally worth it if you LIKE what you are doing. You'll likely practice for 30-40 years. Is 1-2 extra years worth doing something you love for the next 3 to 4 DECADES? In the end, it obviously doesn't make sense to choose pathology to get out in 3 yrs if you hate it. Choose your career path because you LOVE it, without respect for how long it takes, and perhaps you'll live a happier life.

Finally, medicine will likely completely change in the next 2-4 years. Be sure you've gone into it for the right reasons, because the money will not be the same in the future. Keep watching the news.

 

[D30417995]

Speaking of obesity.... I would never take an obese person for any job I was hiring for. I consider it a character flaw of the highest order, particularly in medicine.

I hope you realise that some people have a genetic predisposition to being obese and there are clear research evidence in support of this claim. If all doctors share your mentality, our profession will be finished.

 

[D30417995]

I'm going to be 31 when I graduate from med school, one of the oldest in my class. I think I can go kill myself now. If I'm lucky enough to land a spot in card, I'll be almost 40 when I become a FRESH cardiologist, while my engineering friends have been working for 18 years. At 40, I may still be struggling to buy a house while my friends in other career fields have accumulated enough wealth to enjoy their lives.

 

[Myostatin]

I'm going to be 31 when I graduate from med school, one of the oldest in my class. I think I can go kill myself now. If I'm lucky enough to land a spot in card, I'll be almost 40 when I become a FRESH cardiologist, while my engineering friends have been working for 18 years. At 40, I may still be struggling to buy a house while my friends in other career fields have accumulated enough wealth to enjoy their lives.

I hear you... I only took 1 yr off in all of training and am still looking at ~35-36 by the time I finish cards fellowship... and a lot of my friends from college have already made a killing in finance/hedge funds/law etc. Granted I know that what we do has much more value but its still a tough pill to swallow. One possibility is to consider anesthesia - that will get you down to 35-36 with a very good salary at the end - although its a very different field than cards at least it still has lots of physiology.

 

[Larry Renal]

I'm going to be 31 when I graduate from med school, one of the oldest in my class. I think I can go kill myself now. If I'm lucky enough to land a spot in card, I'll be almost 40 when I become a FRESH cardiologist, while my engineering friends have been working for 18 years. At 40, I may still be struggling to buy a house while my friends in other career fields have accumulated enough wealth to enjoy their lives.

And yet you'll still be deciding whether to drive a BMW or a Benz.

Keep up the hard work--it will be worth it. You'll still practice for a good 25-30 years and will have a different level of job satisfaction than most of your contemporaries.

Good luck.