Day in the life of
Cardiology Fellow – Dr. Vicken Zeitjian
I am a Cardiovascular Diseases Fellow at UT Health San Antonio.
Something I really enjoy is that there’s a lot of variety in my day to day work life. As a cardiology fellow, I spend time seeing patients in various areas of the cardiac care unit, reading echocardiograms, performing transesophageal echocardiograms, reading ECG and nuclear stress tests, inserting pacemakers/defibrillators, and performing cardiac catheterizations. There is never a dull moment and the expertise necessary to become proficient in all these areas keeps it exciting.
After finishing my day at work, I like to pick up moonlighting shifts as a hospitalist a few times a week or provide consultations on Teladoc in order to keep my knowledge of internal medicine sharp. It’s so important to review in order to help you both in practice and for board exams.
Pros
The pros of my job include solving complex problems, saving lives, and having a variety of duties on a day to day basis.. I love seeing patients both in the clinical setting and in the intensive care unit. Quite frequently cardiovascular issues are far from simple and require multidisciplinary discussion. What is learned in the textbooks often seems to only scratch the surface as to what clinical practice is like. I guess I’m a bit biased and can’t think of many cons.
Cons
I will say, however, that the work hours and sleepless nights might be long, but that comes with choosing this field and I would continue to choose it over and over again if I had to.
