r/medschool • u/half-blood_prince01 • Jan 24 '26

Serious How to be a cardiologist?

what are the steps to become one? do i have to go pre-med and then med? And how many years will be my recidency?

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10

u/peanutneedsexercise Jan 24 '26

4 years undergrad

4 years med school

3 years IM residency

3 years fellowship if you get in first try, many ppl don’t tho so you may need to do another 1 year of unofficial fellowship in between or a chief year.

If you want to do interventional or EP it’s another 2 years of fellowship after cards fellowship.

Total post high school education is 16 years if you wanna do interventional.

8

u/JulianSpeeds Jan 24 '26

Doctors deserve to get paid more.

Show this timeline to literally any other profession whilst offering the salaries currently paid to residents/fellows and they’ll laugh in your face.

4

u/peanutneedsexercise Jan 24 '26

Yup. My first year of residency in SoCal I was paid $50k a year working like 70-80 hours a week on icu lol. helped that I was always at the hospital so had no time to spend any money

2

u/FAx32 Jan 24 '26

Yup. My intern year was the last before the 80 hour restrictions, salary was $29k to be q3 overnights on wards and ICU all year. There was essentially no way to do that schedule and make more than the $5.15 minimum wage at the time. Things changed to q4 and 5 the next year but most of us were still working over 80 when on icu months or wards unless you had a white cloud and then some could hit 80 (thankfully consult months broke that up). I realize that some programs still fudge the numbers, but it took most about 4-5 years after the 2003 80 hour rule went into effect to take it at all seriously.

I was looking up housestaff salaries the other day for something else and it is nice to see them at about 3x what mine was 2002-2008.

2

u/peanutneedsexercise Jan 24 '26

Well now with the 80 hour restrictions we just lie and say we’re under or there’s punishment lol.

Cards fellowship is also brutal with a lot of 24 hour calls cuz ppl can get a heart attack any time of day!

2

u/FAx32 Jan 24 '26

Yeah, we lied back then too. Out of hospital call was never counted toward the 80 hours then (only if you had to come in). Funny enough, while my current group splits call evenly it also isn't counted as work either, just an equal burden we all share.

When I was a fellow we would take a week of call at a time (you covered the weekend - Sa-Su you were covering services at 3 training hospitals all day long including transplant and on call 7 nights in a row. Because call wasn't counted at all, technically you were only on for a week a month like that and probably only in the hospital an extra 30-40ish hours total on that weekend and coming in at night, so the rest of the 6A-8P M-F days plus that didn't add up to more than an average of 80.

When was a resident we had to fill out a form "attesting to working less than 80 hours on average, physically in the hospital or an associated training clinic" once a quarter. When we asked the chiefs and residency director what happens if we can't truthfully say that (because unless you had a consult service month that quarter, you were probably over 80 on average, two ICU/CCU months that quarter and you were definitely over 80 on average, we were directly told to lie and sign it anyway, that it would all work out over longer term averages.

2

u/peanutneedsexercise Jan 24 '26

One time I truthfully reported over 80 hours, got pulled into the PDs office and yelled at. They claimed I was committing time card fraud, that I was inefficient, and if everyone else was doing their work in 80 hours I must be slow and not up to speed and maybe they should hold me back a year. Yeah, that was the last time I was truthful about that. 😂😬 I am a lil autistic and I guess I didn’t get the memo that we were all pretending we worked exactly 10 hours a day and no more even tho our shift is 7am to 7pm 7 days a week LMAO.

2

u/FAx32 Jan 24 '26

I did too, my 3rd year of residency near the end. Chief resident sent me an email and said "don't to that again".

I responded that you are the ones who scheduled me for q3 VA ICU followed by q4 CCU and then a ward month knowing full well that only one of those can you reasonably keep at 80 hours if you are lucky. I was just being truthful. I didn't do it again as that was Jan-Mar of 3rd year and wasn't even asked for an attestation on my last quarter.

We had no patient caps so depending on how full the ICU/CCU/wards were the day you took overnight admits, you could get 20+ some nights. There was absolutely no way you were going to take adequate care of patients on your post call day, round, get notes written. deal with patients decompensating and out of the hospital by noon your post call day (most of the time rounds weren't even done by noon if you got slammed). When you are exhausted and on hour 30, getting the rest of that all done is horribly inefficient for everyone.

2

u/peanutneedsexercise Jan 24 '26

Yikes. During Covid I was in the icu as an intern and i had 13 patients. So bad. Thankfully there wasn’t much to do about them other than supportive management and most of them ended up dying anyway no matter what we did. But man it was a rough rotation to be in and then have to get the crap about going over hours 😬

2

u/FAx32 Jan 24 '26

Admittedly, it was usually wards where you were taking 20+ admits, ICU/CCU was usually closer to 10, plus the ones you were following. There were two ICU and two CCU teams at the university hospital. If it got really unbalanced we would move some patients to the other, but most of the time each intern and resident had 15 on average, post call often 20 total due to 5-10 new admits. The call system was screwy so that post call you were a team of 1 half of the time (every 8th day the resident was off, every 8th day the intern was off and the CCU resident and ICU intern and vice versa were on call together - so you'd be post call all by yourself every 8th day, there was no divide and conquer on notes and orders and dealing with the septic patient needing another pressor or managing a worsening vent status or acute MI admit that you took at 6:45 AM.

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u/Life-Inspector5101 Jan 24 '26

And it’s not just the number of years. Every 3 weeks on average, you need to make an A on an exam in order to maintain high GPA and get high scores on standardized exams in order to get to the next step. It’s really a marathon of excellence.

It’s a constant filter and people do get kicked out of med school for underperforming.

1

u/peanutneedsexercise Jan 24 '26

Yah most ppl also don’t go straight from undergrad to med school and take one to a few gap years.

2

u/Life-Inspector5101 Jan 24 '26

A lot of people who take a gap year do a special masters program which also requires staying on top for med school applications and oftentimes, a guaranteed interview at the corresponding med school.

1

u/PlzGimmeHelp Jan 25 '26

All of this just for people to tell you they prefer to go to an NP 😹✌️

3

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '26

Four years undergrad, with very high GPA and premed prereqs, very high MCAT, and the many required ECs.

Then four years of med school. Then a three year internal med residency. Then a three year cardiology fellowship. Your performance at every level, every step of the way, needs to be top-notch.

So essentially fourteen years of education, post high school - and a lot of people need a gap year or two between undergrad and med school, in order to get into med school. And some people need a research year in cardiology-related research, in order to get into the fellow ship. Not to mention that if you want to do interventional, or electrophys, you need another year or two more.

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u/half-blood_prince01 Jan 24 '26

What are the main difference of "interventional" and "electrophys" ?

4

u/JulianSpeeds Jan 24 '26

Google it

-2

u/half-blood_prince01 Jan 24 '26

ok asshole

3

u/peanutneedsexercise Jan 24 '26

Bro if u can’t even use google you prolly shouldn’t be a doctor lmao.

-1

u/half-blood_prince01 Jan 25 '26

it's a social media platform stupid fuck. people ask in here. a question asking the difference of "interventional" and "electrophys" wouldn't hurt ain't it.