I was wondering if you do a stroke fellowship, what type of work would you be doing?
I know your primarly dealing with stroke pts, but in what setting are you working in?
W-e-e-e-l-l-l-l . . . acute stroke patients don't usually walk into your clinic for a prescheduled appointment (although I must say that, yes, it does happen every so often . . . ). So you will probably spend a big chunk of your time in the ER, neuro ICU and neuro ward, as well as consulting on other hospital services, most notably cardiology and ortho. Of course, you will still have a regular clinic (unless you are a pure "hospitalist") where you will see followups from acute care and patients refered for evaluation of things that may or may not have been strokes.
What are the hours like, call like, is it shift work?
It can be shift work if you are in a big medical center with a bunch of other stroke hospitalists. Otherwise call and hours will suck because stroke, like MI, is an acute life threatening emergency that can happen any time of day or night. And you have to fight against that 3-hour TPA window.
Again, if you are in a big group and share call with lots of other people, or if you work for a hospital that has a really good internal medicine hospitalist service, it may not be too bad. But if you are the only stroke specialist in Podunk, you're gonna work like the dog that you are.
Is the pay much different than general neurology?
Hard to say. Depends where you are working. In an academic center it probably actually pays
less than private practice general neurology. Comparing private practice stroke to private practice general, I guess it may pay a little bit more but I doubt it's too much of a difference.
