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- Jun 7, 2004
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I am having a really hard time deciding between Critical Care and Cardiac.
Everyone I spoke to said my original plan of doing both was a waste of time, unless of course I wanted to go into academics which I don't at first but might want to do once I am older and much much more experienced. The guys without fellowships say that I should go into Critical Care since you don't need to do a fellowship to do hearts, however, I know that at any well respected group you'll be required to do a fellowship, especially if you're just starting out.
The cardiac guys say do a cardiac fellowship. The critical care guys say do a critical care fellowship and that if you do a critical care fellowship and make an effort to learn TEE you won't need to do a cardiac fellowship. A new critical care guy at my place said he was recruited to do hearts at other places, even though he was only critical care trained, and that groups know that if you're critical care trained you'll be able to take care of really sick patients in the OR without a problem. This same guy also said that you can get advanced TEE certified from either cardiac or critical care, is this true?
My goal is to be the best anesthesiologist I can be. I want to be the go to guy to take care of the sickest patients in my future group. I don't mind leaving the OR for a a week or two a month to round in the unit but I don't want to leave the OR for good.
What I like about Cardiac Anesthesia is the fact that if I can do a heart I can also do a major vascular or thoracic case. I like the lines, the epidurals, the paravertibral blocks, and the TEE.
What I like about critical care is that I can leave the OR sometimes (very rarely it's nice being outside the OR), I like taking care of sick patients, and love the power you get when working in a closed unit.
Also many say that doing a critical care fellowship will make me a much better anesthesiologist than doing a cardiac fellowship.
My fear is if I do a critical care fellowship, the group I want to work for might not cover the unit and thus my fellowship will go to waste or I might not even get hired because the group wouldn't be able to provide the type of work I'd be looking for and tell me that "we don't think you're the right fit for the job because we don't cover the icu"
If I do a cardiac fellowship, I would still be able to be hired by a group even if they don't do hearts, because I would just be the go to guy for difficult cases and really sick patients, and taking care of healthy patients will be very easy for me.
At the end I would still be willing to do both fellowships, if a top notch institution offered me a spot only if I accepted to do both.
As for location, I don't care where I train, I just want to get into the best place I can, eventually I would like to live somewhere warm, more on the west coast than the east, but once again none of that is really important since I am single and would be willing to live where my future currently non-existant significant other wants to live.
I also feel like critical care is slightly less competitive thus allowing me to get into a much better program than cardiac. I am an extremely hard worker and my evaluations reflect that, however, my ITE scores aren't that great.
Any advice or suggestions are welcome and thanks in advance.
Everyone I spoke to said my original plan of doing both was a waste of time, unless of course I wanted to go into academics which I don't at first but might want to do once I am older and much much more experienced. The guys without fellowships say that I should go into Critical Care since you don't need to do a fellowship to do hearts, however, I know that at any well respected group you'll be required to do a fellowship, especially if you're just starting out.
The cardiac guys say do a cardiac fellowship. The critical care guys say do a critical care fellowship and that if you do a critical care fellowship and make an effort to learn TEE you won't need to do a cardiac fellowship. A new critical care guy at my place said he was recruited to do hearts at other places, even though he was only critical care trained, and that groups know that if you're critical care trained you'll be able to take care of really sick patients in the OR without a problem. This same guy also said that you can get advanced TEE certified from either cardiac or critical care, is this true?
My goal is to be the best anesthesiologist I can be. I want to be the go to guy to take care of the sickest patients in my future group. I don't mind leaving the OR for a a week or two a month to round in the unit but I don't want to leave the OR for good.
What I like about Cardiac Anesthesia is the fact that if I can do a heart I can also do a major vascular or thoracic case. I like the lines, the epidurals, the paravertibral blocks, and the TEE.
What I like about critical care is that I can leave the OR sometimes (very rarely it's nice being outside the OR), I like taking care of sick patients, and love the power you get when working in a closed unit.
Also many say that doing a critical care fellowship will make me a much better anesthesiologist than doing a cardiac fellowship.
My fear is if I do a critical care fellowship, the group I want to work for might not cover the unit and thus my fellowship will go to waste or I might not even get hired because the group wouldn't be able to provide the type of work I'd be looking for and tell me that "we don't think you're the right fit for the job because we don't cover the icu"
If I do a cardiac fellowship, I would still be able to be hired by a group even if they don't do hearts, because I would just be the go to guy for difficult cases and really sick patients, and taking care of healthy patients will be very easy for me.
At the end I would still be willing to do both fellowships, if a top notch institution offered me a spot only if I accepted to do both.
As for location, I don't care where I train, I just want to get into the best place I can, eventually I would like to live somewhere warm, more on the west coast than the east, but once again none of that is really important since I am single and would be willing to live where my future currently non-existant significant other wants to live.
I also feel like critical care is slightly less competitive thus allowing me to get into a much better program than cardiac. I am an extremely hard worker and my evaluations reflect that, however, my ITE scores aren't that great.
Any advice or suggestions are welcome and thanks in advance.
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