 Hey guys, welcome back to channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lux. I'm currently a cardiology fellow and on that note, as I've been making more content behind the scenes in my life as a cardiology fellow, one of the questions you guys always ask is, how much money do you make? It's always in the comments section, sometimes a little bit too blatantly, a little bit rude. So in the future, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make this episode now answering all the questions of how much money I make now, how much money I expect to make, as well as how much general cardiologists make. Interventionals cardiologists will break a bunch of things down. I'll have them in the timestamps down below in the description in case you're interested. In the future, one of you guys asked me how much a cardiologist makes. I'm just going to go ahead and link this video to hopefully answer your question. So first, we have to talk about the different factors that play in a role and how much money you ultimately make as a cardiologist. But first, we need to break down the factors that actually play a role in how much money you make as cardiologists. These are very similar across all fields in medicine. These include things like location, where you work, your scope of practice, or somebody who's doing more procedures, or somebody who's seeing more patients in clinic. In addition, you have to consider things like volume. How many patients are you seeing in the scope of practice that you're practicing? And then finally, you have to consider both your experience as well as the roles you play. Now, all cardiologists are only solely clinical cardiologists. Some work in things like trials. Some are doing more administrations or kind of leading larger groups. And so the further and further you get into your journey as a doctor in general, you may have more doors of opportunities open to you. So now that we know the factors that are in play in regards to your salary as a cardiologist, let's go ahead and break down individual specialties and as well as different parts of your training in terms of how much you make. So first, let's talk about the salary of a cardiology fellow. Now, a little bit of background exactly what a fellow means. When you're at medical school, it makes sense. You're a medical student. When you graduate medical school, technically a doctor, but you still have to go through some type of residency, additional training of the specialty you're interested in. So if you're going to be a pediatrician, you get three years in pediatric residency. If you're going to be a cardiologist for adults, you first have to master general internal medicine for adults. And so that requires three years of internal medicine residency. That's something that I did after finishing a medical school. And so when you're in residency, you are called a resident. And then finally, if you choose to do further training in a specialized field, such as cardiology, nephrology, oncology, that means that you're dedicating the rest of your life to that specific field, you go into something that we call a fellowship. And that's somebody who is in their fellowship training, which is anywhere from one year to three years, depending on the specialty you pick is called a fellow cardiology is three year fellowship. So currently, I'm in my first of a three year cardiology fellowship. Now my salary currently is a cardiology fellow is right around $71 to $72,000. It increases about another thousand ish every single year. So I'll probably be making around 74, 75,000 by time I'm a third year cardiology fellow. Now that salary is going to vary depending on where you're doing your training in the country. There are some places where there's a high cost of living. And so ideally, the program is trying to mitigate that by also giving you a higher average salary for being a fellow. On the other side, I know that there's programs where their average salary may be in the 60,000s. That's usually because they also have a lower cost of living, thus you're able to stretch that dollar a little bit further. Now the biggest difference between all the specialties that we talk about and your salary as a fellow is that exactly that you are salary, which means that for that academic year, whatever your contract says, mine says like 72,000, it's exactly how much I'll make no more, no less. I don't get any more bonus pay. I don't get productivity bonuses like I would have when I was working as a hospitalist is 100% salaried. Now on the flip side, this does vary from program to program, but a lot of cardiology fellowships will allow you to do what's called moonlighting. I'm going to break this down more in detail in a separate video altogether. But essentially as a cardiology fellow, you are likely also internal medicine board certified. You finish three years of residency, you know how to be a general medicine doctor ideally. And so if there are other job positions either at your own institution or somewhere else that needs a medicine doctor, ideally you'd be able to fill it and do those roles. So for example, I used to work as a hospitalist for a year and sometimes the group that I used to work for has a few openings for a few shifts where they need coverage. I can easily pick up a shift here and there on days that I'm not working as a cardiology fellow. For example, a weekend or a vacation week, those can be easily used to kind of offset my income. And as a reference, these moonlighting shifts are about anywhere from 10 to 12 hours where you're making a little bit about 1000 to 1500, depending on the role that you're playing. Again, this will vary from your institution, if you're first even allowed to moonlight, and then to the moonlighting gig you ultimately get. So now let's talk about the salary of a general noninvasive cardiologist. Now a little bit of again, nomenclature, noninvasive cardiologists basically means somebody who is not doing interventional procedures. So if you need to stand for example, your noninvasive doctor is not putting those in that would be your interventional doctor. There are still some procedures you get to do as a noninvasive doc kind of boils into your scope of practice. Are you doing like trans esophageal echoes? Are you reading stress tests? Are you reading images? Are you just seeing patients in clinic and building our views based on how many patients you may be seeing in the consults or in the clinic? There is a lot of ways you can make money as a general cardiologist. Again, just depends on how your clinical breakdown is on from a week to week over a month perspective. And depending on the source, salary will vary a little bit. So for example, in 2023, Doximity put out a physician compensation report where they reported that the general noninvasive cardiologist was making on average $544,000. On the flip side, if you look at the salaries reported from the MGMA, which is a common resource that doctors will use to compare salaries both locally, regionally, in the field they're interested in, they're reporting that the general cardiologist will make about $559,000. And again, like we mentioned, those four factors that I mentioned, location being one of the most important can really have a big wide array of how much you're making. For example, this chart right here shows you in a state like Oklahoma, you may be making closer to $700 to $800,000 of general cardiologists because they just may not have as many available cardiologists to practice in a population that still very much needs that care. On the flip side, other states like Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin, you may be making $300 to $400,000. And so on a personal note, knowing that I live in central Texas in a large metropolitan area where the market is a little bit saturated and usually that means the salaries of individual doctors are a little bit lower compared to places that are more rural, I know that I probably won't be making that $550,000 at least straight out of the gun. I'll probably be making closer to that $425, $450, $475 plus bonuses depending on, again, the scope of practice that I'm ultimately in. And then last important piece of information here is to remember that after your three years of cardiology fellowship, you can become a noninvasive cardiologist. You don't need further training to do anything that we talked about here. And then the biggest takeaway here is that these salaries are basically assuming that you've done a three-year cardiology fellowship and no further training. Perhaps somebody does an extra year or two of advanced imaging where they're learning to be a little bit more adept at things like ECHOs and MRIs and PET scans, but usually your noninvasive cardiologists will go ahead and go through all three years of cardiology fellowship and then go straight into the working field. On the flip side, let's go ahead and break down the salaries of cardiologists that actually require a little bit more training even after fellowship. First, let's talk about the field of interventional cardiology, which we've kind of already broken down our cardiologists that are focusing more on doing interventions. So putting in stents, ballooning, lesions, and coronary arteries, putting in things like mechanical assist devices, at least temporarily, do things like valve repairs, things like tabbers or mitre clips. And there are even some interventional cardiologists that will focus on things that don't always necessarily seem like heart, per se, things like pulmonary embolism or managing diseases like peripheral artery disease and doing those various interventions and those specific fields. And so an interventional cardiologist again on average depending on location and a variety of your scope of practice can have a salary that averages about $694,000. Next, let's talk about the field of electrophysiology. These are pretty much what we call our rhythm doctors. These are your electricians. If you're an interventionalist or you're plumbers, these are your electricians for things like arrhythmias, people who need pacemakers, people who need defibrillators, uplations, lots of cool procedures, really smart doctors, and their average salary will come out to about $644,000. Again, there'll be a wide variety where some doctors are making significantly more, some significantly less, but again, all according to those factors that we broke down earlier. And then finally in the breakdown of super subspecialized cardiologists, people who are requiring even additional fellowship after fellowship are your advanced heart failure doctors. These are your transplant doctors who are working really sick patients with really poor hearts and working them to being evaluated for things like a ventricular assist device or an LVAD or things like transplant. So not only being involved in that process, but taking care of them when they're likely in the ICU, getting them through their procedure of getting their LVAD or their transplant, but also taking care of them after they get their transplant. So avoid or minimize things like rejection. These doctors, in my opinion, are probably the most invested, the most hands on in their patients care makes sense of why from start to finish. But unfortunately, despite the extra amount of training and amount of attention they require and give their patients, they still tend to make a little bit lower than the rest of the cardiology fields on the average salary, about $572,000. Now my personal hope is that this changes over time because there's a great need for amazing advanced heart failure doctors and transplant doctors. But right now that's the current situation that we're in. Now the final specialty that I want to break down for completeness sake for this episode is the field of pediatric cardiology, which obviously as an adult doctor have very, very limited experience. I think I did a one week rotation during medical school. That's pretty much it. So I could be completely wrong in the salary breakdown. If so, just let me know in the comment section down below if you happen to have more information than I do. But this salary breakdown comes from the 2021 MGMA report, which basically says that your average pediatric cardiologist in the 50th percentile is making about $350,000. Those in the 90th percentile are making anywhere from 500 to 30,000. Those who are in the 25th percentile are making about 300,000. So really significantly different than the adult colleagues. But that's kind of again the breakdown generally throughout the field of pediatrics in the first place. Now those are the breakdowns of the salaries, but the big takeaway that I want to have for this video is that if you're interested in pretty much any field in medicine is really, as they say, do not go into it for the money. Just as a personal reference is the making of this video. I'm currently 30 years old. I graduated in college when I was like 21 going on to 22. And I knew that if I picked another field that was more money intended, let's say I went into business or finance, which I had some interest in back in my college days and like to think that by eight or nine years, I would be able to go and grow myself or I could be making sick figures and at least not having to work as hard as I probably do as a doctor where I'm working anywhere from five to six days a week, easily working 10 to 12 hour shifts on most weeks. And on the flip side, even if you were to pick a field that maybe you weren't going to make as much money as you perhaps would as a cardiologist or another kind of doctor, there are tons of people who are in medicine who ultimately get to where I am or even late in medical school, as I've seen, unfortunately, or in residency and they realize that this is not going to be the career that they ultimately want to do for 10 plus years. A lot of you guys may have seen my episodes of my life as a hospitalist, which paid really well. It was every other week off. I was essentially making six figure salary. I was making a six figure salary and I had half of the year to be off to go on things like vacation with my wife and just hang out and chill. But I knew that that was not going to be a 10 year career for me. This is why I ultimately made the decision to go back to cardiology fellowship in the first place. So salary isn't everything right now. I'm very happy with what I do. I feel intellectually driven by the field of cardiology. I know that money is going to be a nice perk because I'd be able to provide to my family most importantly. But even on a fellow salary right now, we're able to have the life that we need despite having a home and a daughter and the budget being very, very tight. We're still able to live the life we want on the $72,000 that I'm making. And so more money doesn't necessarily mean more happiness. I know personally, I tend to be a glass half full kind of person more optimistic about the entire field. That's the whole platform of this channel. But a lot of that comes from me realizing that I really do enjoy what I do. That's not the case for everybody who wants to pursue medicine. So just because the money is good or seems good on paper, videos like this make the numbers seem high. Understand that that comes with 10 plus years of sacrifice where you're not making anything in medical school and nothing during college, very little during residency and even less during fellowship for the amount of time that you're putting in. And eventually there's going to be a moment of reward financially. If you have to ask yourself, are you going to be happy with the career that you pick? So all of you guys that are asking questions about how much so and so makes ask yourself, does that field even interest you? You know, I would not want to be a neurosurgeon despite them making seven eight hundred thousand dollars. It just doesn't seem like the field that I'd want to go into orthopedic surgery seemed like a really cool thing early in medical school because the money was nice, right? And it seemed like a very dude thing to do. But I hated the surgery in the OR room. It's clearly not something I want to do. And thus I never pursued it. And so that's my closing statement of reminding that yes, the money is nice when you ultimately get there. And if you realize it doesn't, then it's better probably to pick a field that drives you where you can actually see yourself doing for 20, 30 or 40 years and develop a wealth of both experience, happiness and of course financially that you'd be able to do over the course of those decades. 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And if you enjoyed this episode, you'll enjoy this episode right here on my Q&A of my life as a cardiologist, as well as this right here of my day in the life as a cardiologist. Hopefully you guys enjoy these. And as always, thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully, I was a little help to you guys and yours and I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.