 So you want to become a cardiologist. You want to know what a cardiologist does, how much money they make, how long it takes to become one and what your typical day will look like. That we're going to talk about all of that in this video. Let's get to it. All right guys, welcome to another episode in the MD journey and the TM day show. My name is Laksham, internal medicine resident, helping people just like you succeed on their medical journey with less stress. Today I am super excited because we are finally starting here, how to become a doctor series on the YouTube channel through playlist and videos, basically helping you understand what options you have in medicine and what each of them do, how long it takes and how much money they make, what they do on a typical day or break those all down. So if you guys have your recommendations on what specialties and fields of medicine you want me to cover, drop them in the comments section down below. Today we are going to talk about a specialty by myself, considering, which is why I'm biased and we will start with the field of cardiology on how to become a doctor series today. Before we get to talk about all the fun things regarding cardiology, make sure if you're new to this channel and you haven't done so already, subscribe to the channel and go ahead and hit that notification bell to get two videos just like this one given to you on a weekly basis and also support the channel in this video. If you enjoy it by hitting that like button. It's the first thing we have to ask is how long does it take to become a cardiologist? What's the training like? And a lot of the videos are going to have similar answers. Now you're going to have to finish your undergrad degrees, which is typically for most people four years and then you have to go to medical school. So that's another four years. Now, the things that change is when you go into cardiology. You first need to do three years of internal medicine residency. That's currently what I'm doing. And after you do internal medicine, you have several options. You can go into cardiology or you can go into GI and work as a stomach doctor and go into hematology or oncology and become a cancer doctor. But to become a cardiologist, you still have to do those three years of internal medicine residency after medical school and then to be a full-fledged accredited physician. You have to do another three years of a cardiology fellowship. So that's like four plus four plus three plus three. Doing my math live 14 years from high school on to be a full-fledged physician as a cardiologist. And I know that seems like a long time because it is, you know, it's going through 14 years after high school is a long commitment to become the profession you want to. But it doesn't even stop there. If you want to do something even more invasive, maybe you want to be an invasive cardiologist. These are individuals who do common procedures like putting in stents or evaluating somebody after they have a heart attack. That requires even more training after the three years of fellowship. So you can be in training for quite some time. There are plenty of different options. If you want to see the full breakdown of all the different roads that you can get in cardiology, if we've written a blog post just for you, that will be on empty journey. I'll link that down below. So the answer to how long is very long. 14 plus 15 plus years. And if you do a gap year or if you have another career, you know, it can be some time until you become a full-fledged cardiologist. And if I chose to do this and I haven't really taken any extra time off, I graduated college a year early and then I took a gap year. So I'm on the typical route. Otherwise, I'll probably will become a cardiologist if everything goes correctly at the age of like 32, 33. And that will be my first full doctor job. So it takes some time for sure. Now, for that much time and commitment, you know, what does your salary look like? How much money do you make? And I'm not going to shy away from sharing numbers just because we're in medicine. I feel like if you want to know how to become a certain specialty, you should know what their salaries are because that is something you should consider. And so for cardiology, it really depends if you're non-invasive versus invasive. And regarding invasive, we've already given the example of people who play Stenson for somebody with coronary heart disease or somebody who has had a heart attack. There's also individuals known as electrophysiology cardiologists who I know it's a mouthful, but they basically work with the rhythm of the heart. And if anything goes A wire, you know, then you can go ahead and fix it through many different cool procedures, things like ablations and so on. And so those also again require more training but are rewarded with a higher salary. So let's break down the difference between non-invasive and invasive. So if you're a non-invasive cardiologist, the numbers can really depend on what part of the country you're in. So this is going to seem like a huge range, but I would say the average is going to be in the $300,000 range. There's going to be still people who make something in the high 200s. There's going to be people who make as high as four or even 500,000. And again, the people who make higher are usually in less desirable areas where they're able to, you know, just make more because there are more desired, the demand is higher. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who live in major cities where there's a lot of cardiologists around. So maybe they just aren't able to make as much depending on the demand that's there. When we talk about invasive cardiologists, the numbers starts to go up into the $400,000 range. And again, that's just because these individuals are one more specialized, more trained and higher in demand because of the procedures that they do. So whenever it comes to doing a procedure, especially a procedure that can be life altering, life saving, like placing a stenton, you're obviously going to be rewarded. But you have other obligations as well as higher malpractice insurance for doing an invasive procedure. So just keep those kind of things in mind. Your salary will go up, but so does your liability. And last few things I want to leave you guys with, especially because I'm interested in the field myself, are things like why you should become a cardiologist, what your typical day looks like, as well as how you can learn more and who you can follow to get more of an insight into the field of cardiology. So in terms of why, I'll at least give you my why. That's because one, the heart is such a crucial organ. They all are, obviously. But the field of cardiology is so well researched. And if you look at the amount of data there it is, I can look at two different patients and understand, you know, that there's probably a research article or study that's evaluated what medications I should give this individual versus this individual. I feel like comparatively to other specialties, cardiology is known to be more data driven. There's more guidelines and it gives me more of a direction on what should probably be best for my patients. Personally, I enjoy the ability to use guidelines and directions, but also have some flexibility and creativity where research hasn't been done. So with that data, I know what medications are great for my patients and doing the best to make sure that they are on the right ones for their specific condition. And if you're somebody who enjoys medicine, the elements and aspects of physiology, cardiology is one of the coolest fields for that because the heart can both impact how the body works as well as be impacted by the body's other comorbidity. So your blood pressure can change, your heart rate can change, how your EKGs look, you know, how much fluid you accumulate, how quickly you get short of breath. Those are just some of the small things that all make sense when you understand what's going on in the heart and the muscles and the cells. It's just, I love it so much. So if you're somebody like me who is a huge nerd and loves physiology but also wants to impact a whole lot of patients, you know, cardiovascular disease is going to be one of the leading causes of death in any country. Through heart attacks, through arrhythmias, through strokes, through heart failure, and you are able to take care of those patients, truly make an impact and ideally, you know, change the course of their prognosis. So all of those are reasons that I want to become a cardiologist or at least I want to explore the field a little bit more in my remaining time in residency. Hopefully that's helped, I'll fuel you to look into the field a little bit more. If you want to understand other questions like what typical day of the cardiologist looks like or who you should follow, maybe on Instagram or social media to get a little bit more insight. And we have a full blog post that we've gone ahead and also created with this video that you guys can check out down below in the link in the description. If you do enjoy it, you know, it would really help us and help me on the channel if you can go ahead and share it with other people who you think that it may also help. And in that blog post, I also gave you a list of some of my favorite people on Instagram physicians who are truly sharing their experiences with a cardiologist that you may be able to enjoy from, seek some cool videos and cool diagrams as well as some cool teaching. That's basically it for today's video. Thank you guys so much for allowing me to nerd out and geek out. And hopefully you found the video still helpful. If you did, make sure you support the video and the community by hitting that like button as well as that subscribe button and that notification bell. And new videos are coming at you every week on Wednesdays and Sundays with topics just like this one. So if you want more videos on how to become a doctor series, make sure you comment down below on what professions you want me to cover in the future. And ideally the goal is eventually we start doing more interviews with professionals in the respective fields. But at least for now, you're just gonna have to deal with me. Hopefully that's okay. If you're listening to this on the podcast, make sure to go ahead and subscribe as well as leave it on as soon as the high tunes that truly helps us get in front of you. And lastly, if you want more videos like this, I will go ahead and link a playlist right here to some of our top videos on YouTube that you guys will probably enjoy on how to become a new doctor as well as if you're a new med student, what type of things to consider. So hopefully you guys enjoy that. But with that being said, thank you guys so much for joining me on this video, joining me on my journey. Hopefully it will help to you on the worst. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.