Tough sell: Preventive cardiology

Tough sell: Course coaxes trainees toward preventive cardiology

April 18, 2012 Shelley Wood
                                       

Dubai, UAE - It's a tricky question: how to convince young doctors to get involved in CVD prevention, when other areas of cardiology are so alluring—and more lucrative? That conundrum was, in part, the impetus for a three-part preventive-cardiology session aimed at students and cardiology trainees that opened the World Congress of Cardiology (WCC) 2012.

It's a tough sell in a part of the world where salaries and cost of living are high, prestige and reputation are paramount, and other specialties pay better. The UAE has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world, according to 2011 figures from the International Monetary Fund, with doctors earning some of the highest salaries; there is no income taxation in the UAE.

"Prevention does not in the mind of the public carry the charisma of invasive cardiologists or cardiac surgery," Dr JM Muscat-Baron (Department of Health and Medical Sciences, Dubai) acknowledged to his young audience at the start of the first session. "[But] you are the future and the catalysts for change; you are the teachers of tomorrow."

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"We believe that it is our young trainees who need to be taught how to practice preventive cardiology," Bazargani said. "Unfortunately, preventive cardiology is not well known in our region, and we believe that only way we can reduce the burden of CVD is through preventing it."

This is the first time the WCC has included a preventive-cardiology session specifically aimed at general medical students and cardiology trainees, one of the WCC 2012 program committee members, Dr Nooshin Mohd Bazargani (Dubai Hospital), told heartwire. Preventive cardiology, she pointed out, is not actually taught in many medical schools in the Middle East, despite the burgeoning need.

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