u/SHARRKO

I have seen so many posts today about USA!

This used to be an unpopular place to move over

I for one tink the training is clearly far superior and the residency hours aren’t as bad as they’re made out but I probably won’t go over for family reasons

What’s the reason you think this is becoming more popular, and can we also shed some light on UK medicine and what’s good here

Part of the deep dissatisfaction comes from constant comparison

Looking for some experiences with the ACF programme for IMT (specifically cardiology but all experiences welcome)

please note this is for clinical research not lab work

For the ACF I would like the know:

1. what is the likelihood of getting 1 protected day per week of academic time for the fellowship

2. how realistic is it to facilitate this in IMT

3. if you decide not to do a PhD straight after the fellowship what do you spend the third year doing and is it very much looked down on? I am wanting to do a PhD but likely later in training

4. how does it work with the on-call rota and pay?

5. any more general experiences please and thank you

I’m currently an IMT in the UK planning a career in cardiology and I’m trying to get a realistic understanding of the financial side of the specialty.

When people discuss private practice in cardiology, I often hear very different things. Some people make it sound like most consultant cardiologists can supplement their NHS income with private work, whereas others say that only a very small number of established consultants with strong referral networks earn significant amounts privately.

I’m particularly interested in:

How common private work actually is among consultant cardiologists.

Whether it’s mainly outpatient clinics or if there are substantial opportunities in imaging, reporting, procedures, etc.

Whether DGH cardiologists typically have much private practice or whether it’s mainly tertiary-centre consultants.

Which subspecialties tend to have the best private opportunities (interventional, imaging, heart failure, EP, prevention, etc.)

Whether “preventative cardiology” and executive health clinics are a genuine growth area or mostly social media hype.

Realistically, what proportion of consultant cardiologists do little/no private work versus earning a meaningful additional income.

I’m not looking for exact numbers, just trying to understand what the landscape actually looks like from people already working as consultants.

Hoping to sit Part 1 whilst working full time. Have currently covered 1000Qs of the passmed Q bank and doing Anki on wrong questions.

Struggling with doing 50Qs daily consistently to be honest at the moment.

Any advise please about whether it’s possible for me to sit and pass the Sept 23rd Date if I do 50 per day then pastest papers?

Thanks

After a good couple years of F3+ I’m trying to really figure out what I want from my career.

I’m considering IR and wondering what hybrid IR/DR consultant life is actually like in the UK.

How common is it to have a genuinely mixed job with:
procedures + reporting

extra income from WLI/telerads/private reporting?

Are hybrid IR/DR roles realistic or do you mostly have to pick one and stick to it?

Would especially love honest insight on:

day-to-day lifestyle

Realistic earning potential

future of DR income with AI/telerads/global FRCR expansion

Current FY doctor trying to decide between Interventional Cardiology and Interventional Radiology.

IC feels more naturally aligned with what excites me:
physiology/hemodynamics
- ACS/PCI/cath lab
- physician identity
- acute decision-making
- team/procedural culture

But the training pathway feels long and intense:
- likely consultant much later (40s)
- more geography instability
- increasing research expectations
- difficult balance with wanting family stability

IR seems to solve a lot of those concerns:
- earlier consultancy (early 30s)
- more flexibility
- strong procedural identity
- still acute/high-tech
- potentially better lifestyle long-term

My concern is whether I’d miss the physiology/patient-management side of medicine and whether image-guided procedures would scratch the same itch as cardiac intervention.

Would really appreciate honest opinions from people in either field, especially anyone who seriously considered both.

As above

Trying to decide if I would want to guide my career to academia as well as clinical work as I’ve previously dome a fair bit of research and fine it engaging

However it’s uncommon to come across people able to tell me what this really involves

Thanks in advance

I’ve noticed that with cardiologists it’s very common to CCT in ur 40s - a higher degree + fellowships + what ever else.

This seems to be particularly bad in cardiology? Or is that just my experience?

I don’t understand why it would take so long to train a competent cardiologist vs a surgeon vs other procedural medic?

Are there any people managing to train through without doing OOPR in cardio?

I’m trying to sanity-check how realistic it actually is to become an interventional cardiologist if you do a post-CCT, high-volume PCI fellowship (UK or overseas). I know it’s competitive, but I’m struggling to work out how competitive in practice.

A few specific things I’d really appreciate insight on from consultants / senior regs:

If someone completes CCT plus a recognised high-volume PCI fellowship, how often do they actually end up with an interventional component in their consultant job?

Is the bottleneck usually getting the fellowship, or getting a consultant post that actually includes PCI?

How likely is it that you have to do a PhD to be competitive for a PCI job, even with a PCI fellowship? Trying to plan how much I should focus on academia

I’m a FY2 (26M) in the midlands and coming to the end of my foundation programme has me feeling reflective and one thing that’s occasionally ruined my mood over the past couple years is just how insulting people can be in hospitals.

By this what I’m referring to are comments from other doctors of any grade that have absolutely no relation to your work - for example having people chatting about how much their hate your (really quite normal) shoes, or some sort of mockery over your choice of jacket you wore on the walk from the car to the mess or saying things like ‘who was it that was telling me they hate ur new hair colour?’ - only to find out that was a conversation happening about your appearance for effectively no reason at all?

It seems that in life the majority of people would consider these unprofessional comments and yet for some reason in hospitals people just act like this doesn’t apply

I completely get that these are probably not malicious comments but does any else experience this level of petty superficial gossipy insult

Got a paper accepted into ESC Congress 2026 for some work I did that wasn’t affiliated with my hospital or a senior academic supervisor.

I’m an F1 so I don’t have study budget and the conference is £400 to attend.

Any way to get additional funding for this or do I have to go out of pocket?