Cardiac Neonatologist?

[ghostbaby]

CHOP offers a cardiac critical care fellowship that one technically is able to do after a NICU fellowship (Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Medicine Fellowship | Children's Hospital of Philadelphia).

Which brings me to my question:
How practical (or impractical) is it to have a career goal to be a neonatologist with a focus on cardiac babies/infants, i.e. a “cardiac neonatologist”? (similar to a cardiac intensivist in the PICU)- is there an available job market?

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[SurfingDoctor]

CHOP offers a cardiac critical care fellowship that one technically is able to do after a NICU fellowship (Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Medicine Fellowship | Children's Hospital of Philadelphia).

Which brings me to my question:
How practical (or impractical) is it to have a career goal to be a neonatologist with a focus on cardiac babies/infants, i.e. a “cardiac neonatologist”? (similar to a cardiac intensivist in the PICU)- is there an available job market?

No one is gonna hire that position. Sounds very institution specific. Like how is NICU fellowship training gonna help treat Fontans and valve replacements? I mean, in my fellowship we had the occasional 30 year old in the CVICU. Granted, there are a lot of neonates, but you get the exposure in the PICU.

Theres a lot of NEC in the CVICU though .

 

[Oso]

Agree with the above, it does not make sense for a neonatologist to do this fellowship in hope to work in a CVICU. Maybe if they just wanted the training to ‘better’ care for pre-op cardiac babies in the NICU before the OR/CVICU but that would be overkill.

 

[oldbearprofessor]

Interesting 1-year program. It would be most likely to appeal to someone who intended to practice neonatology but develop research, education and clinical expertise in neonatal cardiac care. Especially for someone on a highly academic track for their career, it would make them stand out as a neonatology faculty applicant/researcher at some places. Having said that, extra years like this are very rare in neonatology and this would be useful for very few people. But, that's who they're looking for I suspect. I don't really see much route for this leading to a career working in a dedicated CVICU as a neonatologist, although I suppose in a few places they may have so many small infants it's not inconceivable, but would likely be challenging to really make work.