Peds Cardiology

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lingula

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Hey all - just wondering if anyone knows anything about peds cardiology. In particular, i'm wondering about what your options are after you do the fellowship.

- Is it all hospital-based employment, or can you go into private practice (group or solo).
- What kind of lifestyle is associated with the private practice route - i'm assuming it's gotta be better than hospital based practice.
- And finally, the big question: what's the pay like?

ANY info would be much appreciated. Thanks.

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I'd be interested in a response to these questions too, if anybody has the answers out there.

Particularly for academic hospital care and the lifestyle implications.


Thanks!
 
This is what I can gather...

First, relative to adult cardiologists, there are simply not as many children needing a cardiologist; hence, peds cards are going to (usually) practice in a major metropolitan area, or with a tertiary/quaternary care facility. Many such facilities do have satellite clinics, but these aren't exactly attended on a daily basis.

Peds cardio seems to be more of an office-based specialty rather than hospital-based (ie, like neonatology), although not uncommon for peds card to at least participate in cardiac ICU care for kids (this depends largely on the institution, I believe).

The more I look at subspecialties, the more I understand how dependant lifestyle issues can be on factors outside the specialty itself. Will you take every 4th night in-house call? Probably not as an attending. However, chances are that there will not be 15-20 people whom you are in practice with; if there are only 4 or 5, then the number of calls you take annually increase. Also, some practices may get called quite frequently, some rarely.

Pay for all peds subspecialties lags WAY behind their adult counterparts. Also, for the extra 3 years of training, this is 3 years of missing/diminished income.

Going to the NRMP's website, and looking under fellowships for peds cardio should give you a better idea of the match statistics.

Final comments: In our class alone, there seems to be a marked interest in Peds cardio (for the record, no such interest here). Not true if this is the case for most schools across the country. Lots of echo, auscultation, and long term management, but repair of CHD usually left to surgery (this is changing for some minor repairs, however).

Hope this helps!
 
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