Name: So You Want to Be a CARDIOLOGIST [Ep. 3]
Uploaded: 2020-05-02T19:35:05.000Z
Duration: 11 min 38 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

So you want to be a cardiologist. You've come to the right place.

In this third episode of So You Want to Be,

let's talk about what it means to be a cardiologist,

how to become one, and some of the hidden perks and downsides of being a heart doctor.

Welcome to the next installment of our  So You Want to Be series,

where we highlight a specific specialty within medicine,

and help you decide if it's a good fit for you.

You can find the entire list on our So You Want To Be playlist.

If you wanna help us decide which specialty or healthcare professional to cover next,

drop a comment down below with your request.

A lot of you asked for cardiology in the last video, so that's what we're going to do here

If you like to see what being a cardiologist actually looks like, check out my second channel,

Kevin Jubbal, M.D., where I do a second series in parallel titled A Day in the Life.

We may even be doing A Day in the Life with our cardiologist guest from today's episode.

The right side of the heart pumps blood to the lungs to oxygenate it,

so that the left side of the heart can pump the oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.

Cardiology is the specialty of medicine dealing with the heart

and some specialized circulatory pathologies.

If you like medicine and find physics and fluid dynamics interesting, cardiology may just be for you.

It was personally one of my favorite blocks we studied in medical school.

Cardiologists are also one of the few doctors that can actually save your life

Obviously, cardiologists are the go-to doctors for heart attacks,

the technical term for which is myocardial infarction, but they also handle many other pathologies

such as high blood pressure, known as hypertension, high cholesterol, known as

hyperlipidemia and irregular heart rhythms, known as arrhythmias.

It's not a surgical specialty, but it's also not a traditional medical specialty.

Cardiology is unique in that it's more procedural than the average medicine specialty.

Cardiologists have several cool non-invasive tests like

electrocardiograms, or ECGs, and echocardiograms or cardiac CTs and MRI's.

But invasive tests are also part of the job

such as coronary angiography, catheterization, and electrophysiology studies.

To become a cardiologist, you don't go to cardiology residency.

First, you complete 3 years of internal medicine residency.

This is actually the number one most common residency that med school graduates pursue.

However, after internal medicine residency, you can choose to subspecialize,

Cardiology is one of the most competitive internal medicine fellowships

and requires another 3 years of training to complete.

In total, you'll be spending 6 years in addition to medical school to become a cardiologist.

If you want to subspecialize further, such as interventional cardiology, or

electrophysiology, tack on another 1 or 2 years on top.

If you want to do pediatric cardiology, that's a slightly different process.

you'll do three years of pediatrics, and then three years of pediatric cardiology fellowship.

Becoming a cardiothoracic surgeon is an entirely different process.

At its core, CT surgery is a surgical specialty,

and therefore, it makes sense that you have to do a surgical residency rather than a medicine residency.

First, you can do 5 years of general surgery residency,

plus 2 to 3 years of cardiothoracic surgery fellowship.

Or second, do a 6 year integrated cardiothoracic surgery residency.

Rather than telling you what it's like to be a cardiologist,

I'm gonna hand it over to my friend, Dr. Rohin Francis.

Not only does he have an awesome YouTube channel, MedLife Crisis, which you should definitely check out,

but he's also a practicing cardiologist in the U.K.

Without further ado, here is Dr. Francis.

Cardiology is the best of both worlds specialty.

A fantastic tunable combination of acute and chronic medicine, satisfying those who like fast-paced critical illness

while still allowing the long term relationships with patients and disease that make medicines so rewarding.

It also combines the best of medicine and surgery;

multi-system disease processes and diagnostic challenges alongside increasingly complex

and essentially surgical interventional procedures.

Cardiology can be divided into a few broad areas.

Intervention - which involves invasive procedures such as coronary angioplasty and valve implantation.

Sometimes we're referred to as "The orthopedic surgeons of medicine" which is

Heart failure - which can range from managing an outpatient to a community-based service for patients with impaired hearts

right through to running a cardiac intensive care,

specializing in mechanical support and transplants.

Electrophysiology - the management of rhythm disorders with medications and invasive ablation procedures. ECG nerds.

Devices - the management of heart rhythm disorders with medications and by implanting pacemakers and defibrillators.

Imaging - these are cardiologists experts at the non-invasive scanning techniques like CT, MRI, and echo.

They are the glue that sticks cardiology together.

And of course, there are other fields like adult congenital heart disease, women's and obstetric cardiology,

sports cardiology, and preventive cardiology.

The choice of specialty hugely affects the typical working day,

but with ever-increasing levels of heart disease and an aging population, all cardiologists are busy.

I am an interventional cardiologist so a typical week for me might be a couple of days in a cardiac catheter lab,

performing a combination of emergency and elective procedures,

a half-day in clinic, daily coronary care unit, and general ward rounds.

In my case, I also have a half-day reporting and performing echocardiograms and MRI scans,

Cardiology is a very academic field with many physician-scientists, but it is not mandatory.

However, It is the most evidence-based specialty there is,

so a thorough understanding of research is essential.

On calls are invariably busy - 30-40% of emergency room admissions are cardiac - from chest pain to loss of consciousness and breathlessness.

Intervention is not a subspecialty to choose if you don't wish to have to come in most nights on call.

I don't want to perpetuate the cliché that Cardiology is not conducive

to having a normal personal, and social life.

Of course, we all know type A personalities that live and breathe their work

but there are many cardiologists who enjoy their free time

Subtitles ListPlay Video

So You Want to Be a CARDIOLOGIST [Ep. 3]

deprivation

rhythm

critical

evidence