Day to day

[Lurker123456789]

What is the day to day life like of a cardiologist (particularly in academics)? Like what is your typical weekly schedule? What are the most common types of procedures an interventionalist does?

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[nlax30]

Not QUITE an attending yet but....

A typical day will vary widely obviously depending on their particular specialty (General, Interventional, EP, Imaging, Heart failure, etc...) and practice type.

In general, most cardiologists, regardless of specific sub-speciality, will have some combination of clinic, inpatient consults/follow ups, and procedures in a typical week. Again, this will greatly depend on the particular practice and what sort of academic center they are at. If a large tertiary care academic center with active clinical research they may also have some dedicated time during the week for research activities or administrative type work.

As far as clinical work goes for a procedural based cardiologist, Interventional or EP, they may have a couple days of week of clinic and then 2-3 days of procedures where they may be in the cath/EP lab all day. Or they may have split days where they have a morning or afternoon clinic combined with procedures the other half of the day.

I'm in EP so a typical day for us would involve meeting with the team (fellows, NPs) in the EP lab first thing in the morning and taking a glance at what procedures we have for that day. If there's time before our first case then we may try and round on some inpatient followups and/or see any new consults. If we start with a case then we'll round and see any new consults with the team in between cases. Depending on what day it is we then may have a half day of clinic one day and a full day clinic another.

A general cardiologist will have a somewhat similar setup though instead of cath/EP procedures they may have TEEs to perform and ECHO/imaging studies to read in the hospital before or after rounding combined with clinic patients.

For an interventionalist the bread and butter is left heart caths to look at the coronary arteries. Also common will be right heart caths. Depending on their training and skill set there are also peripheral angiography/interventional cases, and structural cases (TAVR, Mitral clips, ASD closure, Watchman).

 

[Lurker123456789]

Not QUITE an attending yet but....

A typical day will vary widely obviously depending on their particular specialty (General, Interventional, EP, Imaging, Heart failure, etc...) and practice type.

In general, most cardiologists, regardless of specific sub-speciality, will have some combination of clinic, inpatient consults/follow ups, and procedures in a typical week. Again, this will greatly depend on the particular practice and what sort of academic center they are at. If a large tertiary care academic center with active clinical research they may also have some dedicated time during the week for research activities or administrative type work.

As far as clinical work goes for a procedural based cardiologist, Interventional or EP, they may have a couple days of week of clinic and then 2-3 days of procedures where they may be in the cath/EP lab all day. Or they may have split days where they have a morning or afternoon clinic combined with procedures the other half of the day.

I'm in EP so a typical day for us would involve meeting with the team (fellows, NPs) in the EP lab first thing in the morning and taking a glance at what procedures we have for that day. If there's time before our first case then we may try and round on some inpatient followups and/or see any new consults. If we start with a case then we'll round and see any new consults with the team in between cases. Depending on what day it is we then may have a half day of clinic one day and a full day clinic another.

A general cardiologist will have a somewhat similar setup though instead of cath/EP procedures they may have TEEs to perform and ECHO/imaging studies to read in the hospital before or after rounding combined with clinic patients.

For an interventionalist the bread and butter is left heart caths to look at the coronary arteries. Also common will be right heart caths. Depending on their training and skill set there are also peripheral angiography/interventional cases, and structural cases (TAVR, Mitral clips, ASD closure, Watchman).

Thank you for the detailed response. So when you say left heart caths, does that include placing stents and interventions or is it mostly diagnostic? (I apologize if this is a dumb question, I am just a med student trying to understand what exactly this all means)

 

[nlax30]

Thank you for the detailed response. So when you say left heart caths, does that include placing stents and interventions or is it mostly diagnostic? (I apologize if this is a dumb question, I am just a med student trying to understand what exactly this all means)

All the above. Could be a diagnostic study for pre-operative planning such as in a valve case, could be an elective diagnostic that then finds a significant lesion that requires intervention, could be an urgent STEMI at 3am...... So a mix of all of those.

 

[IMreshopeful]

There are so many different practice models it’s crazy. Some places are pure outpatient, no call, no weekends, just seeing clinic patients and reading echos or nuclear studies and such. Some are heavily inpatient weighted. Some are more focused on imaging. It depends on what you want to do. In general you usually have a clinic practice as your baseline and have some part of the week either dedicated to procedures (if invasive) or imaging/stress/inpatient (if noninvasive) as well as rotating call depending upon how many people are in the practice etc. Ultimately you need to find something that fits what you’re looking for in a career.

Some interventionalists in addition to what’s described above also do peripheral interventions (leg stents/PTCA), if they are trained to do so. There’s some boutique office procedures as well which even gen cards folks can learn - vein ablations etc. EP and gen cards can also do loop recorder implantation in the office if they know how.