Non-interventional Cardiology, what does private practice look like?

[Eyeaboutthat]

Some questions from someone curious about the field:

What does the day-to-day look like in non-interventional private cardiology? Do you have dedicated time to read imaging studies and/or do TEEs? Do you follow all your patients that get admitted to the hospital?

Everyone talks about the stressful lifestyle of cardiologists. What makes it so stressful once you get to attending level? Of course any oversight can be significantly detrimental because we're talking about the heart here, but in cases of emergency, don't patients get sent to ED in which case the attending on call handles their care?

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[cardsguy2017]

You've got it mostly right. It can vary by group/hospital setup, but generally speaking you have clinic, dedicated time or squeeze in time to read imaging studies, cath lab days, see your hospital patients, etc. It can get stressful with the amount of work and patients you have to see, but that's not universal as some folks are busier than others, and it's not isolated to cardiology only, lots of specialties are stressful. Despite the critical nature of cardiac care, you're trained to handle it. Emergencies for non-interventional can often be handled by the ED, hospitalist, ICU with cardiology as the consultant, but this can vary.

 

[nlax30]

A typical day is going to be EXTREMELY variable and depend on the group and how they structure things such as procedures, clinic duties, echo reading, etc....

My buddy in general cards private practice has his days set up with hospital rounds, TEEs, echo reading at the hospital during the morning/first half of the day and then afternoon is all clinic. He may also see consults in the morning as he's there and during the afternoon the call guy for the group doesn't have clinic and covers consults for the 4 hospitals they cover.

The stress part I guess is relative and each field has it's stressful components. Also, one person may find a particular aspect much more or less stressful than someone else. At the above place I know some of the stress came from them covering 4 hospitals when on call, having to drive back and forth and just having potentially a dozen consults stacked up just waiting to be seen. Not to mention the constant phone calls from the floors, having to read the echos within a specific time period, handling emergent issues, etc....

 

[wamcp]

A typical day is going to be EXTREMELY variable and depend on the group and how they structure things such as procedures, clinic duties, echo reading, etc....

My buddy in general cards private practice has his days set up with hospital rounds, TEEs, echo reading at the hospital during the morning/first half of the day and then afternoon is all clinic. He may also see consults in the morning as he's there and during the afternoon the call guy for the group doesn't have clinic and covers consults for the 4 hospitals they cover.

The stress part I guess is relative and each field has it's stressful components. Also, one person may find a particular aspect much more or less stressful than someone else. At the above place I know some of the stress came from them covering 4 hospitals when on call, having to drive back and forth and just having potentially a dozen consults stacked up just waiting to be seen. Not to mention the constant phone calls from the floors, having to read the echos within a specific time period, handling emergent issues, etc....

When does the day start for something like that? Getting in at 9am for rounds/reading at 4 hospitals before aftrrnoon clinic at 12pm seems impossible. Are you basically pulling 12 hour days for that kind of setup?