Cardiology.......

As in much of medicine the hours you work as an interventional cardiologist depends on your practice situation. If you are an interventionalist in a large group practice with a lot of interventionalists, then I doubt you'll be working as hard as a guy in a smaller practice. The thing about being an interventionalist is there are frequent emergencies and when you're on call you can expect to be working at odd hours of the night.

Common wisdom passed from generation to generation of med students dictates that one should attempt to snag a medicine residency at a place where they offer the desired fellowship. So, yes, you heard right. If you want to be a Harvard-trained cardiologist it's best to get into a Harvard-affiliates medicine residency. That doesn't mean, of course, that all of Harvard's cardiology fellows come from a Harvard-affiliate, but that it would be somewhat easier for you, as a Harvard medicine resident, to make the in-roads and connections necessary to guarantee yourself a fellowship spot.

The match for fellowships takes place EARLY in your PGY2 year, so your friend, the PGY2, is probably in the process of applying and hopefully he'll match at the end of this calendar year (not the academic year).

Good luck.

 

I would be stunned if there was any interventional cardiologist who could limit their work to 40 hrs/week. Between their clinic hours, their cath lab time, the consults, and the inpatient services many of them work hrs. similar to the busiest surgeons. The same obligations exist for non-interventional ones(minus the cath lab), who I see @ the hospital all night long seeing consults.

 

droliver and the rest are correct. While it's always nice to say that "lifestyle is what you make of it", Interventional Cards is one of those fields where you just can't. First, and foremost, the usual scenario in private practice is that say in a group of 10 or 12 there are 3 or 4 guys who do intervention, while the rest do nothing in the cath lab (non-invasive/non-interventional) or just do diagnostic cath (invasive/non-interventional). You also usually have one or two EP guys in the group (though this will change rapidly given the indications for bi-vent pacing in pt with LVEF<30% -- another screening colonoscopy scenario that's already happening). So if you're one of only three or four who do intervention, you are essentially q3-4 in your practice. Now, given that you do intervention, you probably do proportionately less clinic or taking care of Unit players than your partners do (from a time and equity standpoint) but don't worry, there will be ways to fill the time

I had written something a long time ago about fast tracking in IM. Bottom line -- fast-tracking only works if you can substantiate plans for a academic/research career that means you're spending 2-3 years of fellowship doing research alone, separate from the clinical years. The point is that they'll let you save a year of Medicine because you're spending more time in fellowship than a more "traditional route". Also, the only fellowships I see people fast-tracking into are ones that are traditionally reasearch heavy like ID, Heme-Onc, Endocrine, Renal. These are ones that are not nearly as competitive as ones like GI or Cards. People fast-track into these but it is as rare as hens teeth.

Hope this helps.

 

Sometimes the road getting there is the better than the destination.

If you truly love cardiology, then you won't mind the 8 years of training.