Heart failure/non Accr Cardio fellowships

[cardapplicant]

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Hi, Currently working in primary care for last 3 years but planning to get into the cardiology fellowship. Being an IMG, residency from comm program, some research (not in cardiology), 3 year out of training program to fix my visa issues, I know my chances of getting into adult cardiology are non existent so I was thinking of applying for non accredited fellowship and then work my way up. Is that a good strategyi? If not then what is best option I have right now to work for cardiology fellowship? Does anyone know how to get the information about the programs/details of non accredited cardiology fellowship? Will vascular medicine help?

Thanks for your time

 

[dragonfly99]

Why don't you apply once and see what happens? Has anyone from your community program gotten into a cardiology fellowship program recently? Have you any way of getting a recommendation letter(s) from a cardiology faculty member? If not, then your plan to do one of those nonaccredited CHF fellowships or something is probably a good one...or just find a research fellowship in cardiology you can do for a year or two. It will be painful to take a pay cut but if you really want to be a cardiologist I think it is a good plan. Also, are you willing to move anywhere (like Midwest, South, etc.)? Places outside of major cities on the east and west coasts probably don't get nearly as many applicants.

 

[CV student]

To Dragonfly99:

Need suggestion from you. I am an IMG, trained IM in a good uni affiliated community program (graduated 6/2011) -- people have gone to cardiology from my programs. Have 3/4 abstracts in JACC, 2 original papers in JACC as 2nd author, another paper under peer review in JACC. Currently working in a high impact multi-center study, with a potential for publication in a very high impact journal. Currently doing Masters of Science in Clinical Research from a top public health school in the country; have no visa issue. I have great letters from my PD, my letter writers are decently known in their sub-specialy in and outside the country. I have great USMLE scores (99,94, but 80 only in step 3). I do not think I have anything "bad" in my application. Applied to cardiology this year to tons of programs of varying degree of competitiveness. Only got 2 interviews, but that too only after my letter writer wrote to these two programs. Statistically, my chance of matching this time is not great. I have devoted my life to cardiology, and I cannot abandon cardiology that easily. One problem I can think of in my application is that my application was geared towards academic programs, which are very competitive. On the other hand most programs that take IMG are not that academic, and so they may not have invited me. My specific question to you --- what should be my back up plan. Out of different options such as echo fellowship, heart failure fellowship, cardiac imaging research, cardiac imaging fellowship (I mean clinical) or some post-doc research training. Out of these, the most appealing idea for me is cardiac imaging clinical training with extensive research (hopefully also incorporating ECHO). Because I think this will be the most dynamic field in cardiology. My research experience so far is related to intervention cardiology. But, I am not sure if I will do that for rest of my life. Likewise I do not know about EP -- likely I will be more interested in general cardiology and CV imaging, but I will eventually find this out some time after my clinical cardiology training. Please advice what should I seek, and especially what will make me more competitive when I apply next year? Also what could the problem have been with my application this year. Thank you.

 

[CV student]

Anyone with any suggestion on my above question! Thank you.