Cardiology

My month on cardiology was very educational. I am much more comfortable with both EKGs and echocardiograms, staples in medicine and anesthesia. Bread and butter consults included chest pain, atrial fibrillation and flutter, and pre-operative evaluation. Interesting consults were mostly strange arrhythmias, both bradycardic and tachycardic. I became more familiar with the wide selection of rapidly evolving cardiac drugs. The rotation was also highly evidence-based, as much of cardiology is, and I really appreciated that. We were able to see the cath lab, transesophageal echocardiograms, and other procedures. We acted pretty much as interns, with a good scope of responsibility and sufficient oversight.

Ever since I did research on beta-adrenergic receptors in the heart, I have loved cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology. The medicine of cardiology will always have a place in my heart (okay, I admit I intended that one). But after this rotation, I have become very excited about cardiac anesthesia, using real-time echocardiography and managing patients with complex comorbidities. If I had instead decided to go into medicine and then cardiology, I think electrocardiography is where I'd end up because I never get tired of the EKG. Cardiology has a lot of analytic problem solving which caters well to my way of thinking.