| Science Career Interview of a Cardiologist |
| Name: Dr. Bar-Shlomo 1. What made you want to become a cardiologist? Well first of all, I always wanted to be a doctor. I read books of llife history of several doctors and found it very fascinating. While in medical school, my father had a heart attack. After that, I started reading a lot of cardiology. When I actually arrived at the stage of cardiology, I was ahead of the class and was very good at it as well so I continued... 2. What eduction did u have to undergo prior to becoming a cardiologist and how many years did it take you? First I went to highschool. Then I had to go through a system: 6 years of medical school, 1 year of internship, 3 years of specializing in internal medicine, and 4 years of specializing in cardiology. So in total, it took 14 years. I had done all of this in Israel. In Canada, the total number of years would be different. 3. What do you like and dislike about your job? I do not like the long hours, night calls, weekends, long days.There is one thing that I do not distlike but it is just an obligation.Cardiology changes all the time which means that I mus keep learning all the time in order to keep up. I like everything about my job, the challenge, and having contact with people as well. 4. Approximately, what is the yearly salary of a cardiologist? There really is no salary, it all depends on the income you make: howmany patients you see, expenses of supplies, the office, nurses, accountants... What ever is left depends on how much I work. The first 10 days I work to pay off my expenses and the second 10 days, I work to pay off my taxes. If I work longer hours and work more, I get paid more. 5. What is the most difficult thing about your job? If you do what you like to do, nothing is difficult about it. Although a loss of a very nice patient and dealing with unreasonable patients can be difficult. This is infrequent. It is also not easy if you have family plans and you get a call for work etc... 6. Is there a way you can specialize further in this field? Cardiology is divided into several subspecialties. You can be trained in: altra sound, angiogram of the heart, rythm problems of the heart, treatment of heart failure, pace-makers, etc... First you need to be a general cardiologist and then go for the area that attracts you the most. 7. How do you progress to become a cardiologist? (example: surgeon first...2nd?) First you go to medical school and you make a descision: do you want to be a surgeon or a physician? If you want to be a heart surgeon, you first become a general surgeon and take a few more years of extra training in heart surgeon. Then you go into internal medicine and then finally cardiology. 8. Would it be better to specialize in a particular area if you want to become a surgeon and why? A surgeon is someone who works in an operating room. First of all you have to know if you want to be a surgeon or a non-surgeon. Then you go study more into it. If you are a general surgeon, you do surgery on everything. The most difficult is family practice (GP), you have to keep up with everything, while in a subspecialty you go more in depth. Statistics say that more women then men don't work full time because they have to balance between responsibilities at home and at work. It all depends on what you want your life style to be. It is basically a life style choice. 9. What advice would you give students if they had future aspirations to be cardiologists or a surgeon? At this age, you shouldn't aspire to be a cardiologist, aspire to be a physician. Getting into medical school is more difficult now.If you want to get into it, try to get you grades, as high as possible. The universities look at good grades. Medical schools look at your grades and not the school you came from as well. 10. Approximately how many hours do you work in a week? I work from 8 o'clock in the morning to 7 o'clock at night. I work 5 days a week. Also, I am on call all night and on weekends. 11. What attributes must an ideal cardiologist have? They must be: keen to learn about new developments, be able to work well with people, have an interest in science and technology, and be able to invest a lot of their time to keep learning. 12. If you could go back and change your occupation, would you? No 13. Does your job affect your personal life? (example: work long hours, traveling a lot? etc...)? Every job does that... |
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