cardiology + science career

[anxietypeaker]

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PreM1 here (ie read at own risk) 🙂

Is it possible to be a completely nonprocedural cardiologist (do mainly nonprocedural diagnosis/medical treatments or management)? I'd like to focus mainly on bench research but still see patients (people tell me interventional/invasive cardiology takes too much time away from the lab).

 

[dragonfly99]

Yes, definitely. If you want to do academics and bench research, you can do what they call "noninvasive cardiology" where you would see patients in clinic and on the hospital wards, maybe read some echocardiography or nuclear stress tests, but not do caths or put in pacemakers, etc. You will need to learn some of that stuff during fellowship, though. Fellowship programs are looking for people who want to do research...but it's particular fellowship programs such as those at places known for their academic bench research (talking about the Duke University, Washington U., other academic med center types of places). You should try to get involved w/bench research between 1st and 2nd years of med school to start getting your foot in the door, if that is your interest.
You should look into something called ABIM research pathway as well...this allows you to do combined internal medicine residency + fellowship in an area like cardiology, without having to apply twice. But you can worry about that later.

 

[howelljolly]

Yes, definitely. If you want to do academics and bench research, you can do what they call "noninvasive cardiology" where you would see patients in clinic and on the hospital wards, maybe read some echocardiography or nuclear stress tests, but not do caths or put in pacemakers, etc. You will need to learn some of that stuff during fellowship, though. Fellowship programs are looking for people who want to do research...but it's particular fellowship programs such as those at places known for their academic bench research (talking about the Duke University, Washington U., other academic med center types of places). You should try to get involved w/bench research between 1st and 2nd years of med school to start getting your foot in the door, if that is your interest.
You should look into something called ABIM research pathway as well...this allows you to do combined internal medicine residency + fellowship in an area like cardiology, without having to apply twice. But you can worry about that later.

This is what I was going to suggest. Its basically 2 years of Internal Med residency, 2 years of excellent research training/experience in cardiology (or whatever you want), and 2 years of Cardiovascular Disease fellowship.

After this, you are board elegible in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease (aka cardiology). You'll probably have built enough of a niche for yourself to get a faculty position right away. Many of these faculty positions allow you to do 80% research and 20% clinical. That could mean that you just spend one day each week in the outpatient CHF clinic, or attending on the inpatient consult service, or locked in the basement reading echos... its a pretty good deal if you like research.