Life as a Cardiologist will vary based on the type of Cardiologist and the practice setting. In general, the lifestyle for a Cardiologist is busy. Academic Cardiologists generally have it better off than those who are private as there are residents and fellows who do a lot of the clinical work for you. However, you have plenty of other demands as an academic that can keep you busy, and you still attend on wards and CCU so life can be quite busy, along with the politics of academia and the grind of getting grants to fund part of your earnings being exceedingly painful. You can argue in many ways that academia is as painful as private practice for a different set of reasons.
Remember, in any field where you take care of sick patients, you will be in the hospital long hours. The doc that irish79 is following seems like an exception -- what about all the sick inpatients on pressors or with balloon pumps she has, or the 2am call for chest pain (AGAIN!), or the midnight heart failure admission, or the general surgeon whose post-appy pt is now in Afib with RVR, and is hypotensive as a result but isn't bleeding? That is the real stuff that you see in the middle of the night, and that keeps you up at night, not at 10am.
There are rare private practice settings where Cardiologists in a large group divide the work such that they "rotate" spending a set # of days a month on inpatients and CCU without seeing clinic folks, and then switch to where they do outpt for a little while only, and these large groups can space call out more as well. These groups are typically affiliated with a single hospital where they admit all their patients and do all their procedures. They don't have to run around to other hospitals. Within these groups, there may be non-invasive types, invasive (diag cath only), or interventional (therapeutic cath), who focus on there area of expertise -- e.g. the nuclear person doesn't do cath, and the cath-jockey doesn't do treadmill tests. And incomes will vary between these docs within the group, depending on what they're doing and how much they bill. But they will all be up in the middle of the night admitting chest pain and heart failure, sharing the pain. Some people think that by doing EP they'll avoid that, but it is the RARE group that does only EP, and EP docs in general cards groups take regular general cards call as well in many instances. No guarantees.
However, in most private practice settings I have seen, the group covers multiple hospitals, and the Cardiologists are running around cathing someone at one hospital, doing a stat ECHO in another, and leaving their patients waiting in clinic unless they can get one of their partners to cover in clinic, or run to the third hospital for them to see the emergent consult. But then they don't bill for seeing that patient, the partner they've asked for help does. But you can't be in 4 places at once, so you do the best you can.
So for an academic -- probably up at 5 or 6 if on service to round with your team early so that you can have your day to see clinic patients if scheduled that day. If you do non-invasive, you have your dedicated times to read films, or if you cath, your dedicated time to do that. Maybe not everyday, but 3-4 days/half days per week. Then you still have to find time to research, write grants, and publish.
For a private practice type -- days are divided between inpatient hospital rounds (starting whenever depending on the size of your service and how the rest of your day is, but bet on early AMs too) -- then squeezing new consults in between procedures or non-invasive testing, then clinic. Your day is some mix of all of the above depending on what you do (cath or noninvasive). Then if you are on call (or backup call if your group has that) you will still be there at night. And with sick inpatients in the hospital, depending on how your group does things as the PM rolls around, you may be there taking care of the pt. at night yourself (instead of the on call doc).
There are always exceptions, but what I've described above seems fairly typical for both types of Cardiologists. Feel free to PM me with questions.
