Welcome to Dr. Warrick's podcast channel. Warrick is a practicing cardiologist and author with a passion for improving care by helping patients understand their heart health through education. Warrick believes educated patients get the best health care. Discover and understand the latest approaches and technology in heart care and how this might apply to you or someone you love. Hi, my name is Dr. Warrick Bishop and I'd like to welcome you to my podcast and videocast station. Today I'm joined by Dr. Karam Kostner, a friend and colleague. Hi, Karam. Hi, Warrick. Thanks for having me again. Today we decided we'd talk about something a bit different and we thought we'd talk about why did we become a cardiologist. So I'm going to hand it over to you to start off with, Karam. You get to run the interview to start with. Yes, Warrick. In fact, I always wondered why you ended up as a cardiologist. You know, I could see you in different medical specialties as well. You're very good at explaining things simply. You know, surgeons would really benefit from this sometimes. What made you interested in cardiology? Well, truth be told, my journey started years ago in high school. I was pretty good at maths and science and drawing, and I thought I'd be an engineer and applied for work experience as an engineer. unbeknownst to me ended up doing civil engineering which is really a very small part of engineering and the exposure I had was in an office with a few blokes drinking coffee out of dirty cups designing retaining walls and reticulation systems and it didn't grab me at the time and I thought well I said to my dad I don't think I can do engineering if this is engineering and of course I missed out on aeronautical engineering and electrical and various other things and he said well you you get if you're going to go to uni you better have something that's got a job and directed me to you know accounting or law or medicine and of course I'm not very good with numbers and I'm mildly dyslexic so I couldn't write essays for law so I settled on medicine. How did you get into medicine? Look, one more question. I'll tell you in a second, but would you go into cardiology and medicine again or would you do something different if you had your time again? Look, I love what I do and I think I would do it all again. I had ups and downs and found the journey difficult. At one stage during my advanced training, I had the motto, smart enough to get in, dumb enough to do it, which is not very positive. And, yeah, but this career has been fantastic for me. And when I got through my physician exams, one of the first rotations I did was hematology. And at the time, you may or may not recall this, they were just finding out that vitamin A could alter the genetic expression. in particular cancers. And there was a cancer called hairy cell leukemia. And this was like front page of the Lancet and, you know, his leading journal sort of material. And I thought it was fascinating and was so excited about hematology. I could see myself being a hematologist for the rest of my life until I went to the ward rounds and we were looking at the slides of the individual patients. And the consultant was describing the brown, degranulation, the pink eosinophil stains. And you may not know, but I'm colourblind. And I literally sat there completely unable to see what they were talking about. And so I could never be a haematologist. That's very interesting. Yeah, look, I always was interested in languages, first of all, because I was very good in languages like French and English and Italian when I was young. But my parents early on said, look, in 20 years, computers are going to do all the translating and you may be unemployed if you're unlucky. So there went my idea of languages. And then I was very interested in veterinary science because my grandfather was a veterinary doctor and he specializes in exotic animals and horses. And I went with him when I was small. But again, he said, look, in a couple of years. It'll all be about small animals. It won't be the country veterinarian that he was. And he talked me out of it. He said, you might as well do medicine. And so I started medicine. And after I had finished medicine, or during my studies, I worked in laboratories. I was already interested in lipids. My father is a biochemist who was an expert in lipidology as well. So I worked in lipid laboratories in Germany and Austria. fell in love with biochemistry to a certain degree and wanted to become a medical biochemist or a laboratory physician. And I did that for a little while, but I sort of missed the contact to patients and realized early on that there were not many cardiologists back then that were interested in lipids. So I thought, if I become a cardiologist and specialize in cholesterol disorders, I might distinguish myself from my colleagues in Austria back then. And that's how I ended up in cardiology. Well, congratulations to you, Karim. Not only have you distinguished yourself from your colleagues in Austria, but you're a leader in Australia and recognised worldwide these days. So congratulations to you. No, thank you very much. Whereas I got into cardiology because I was colourblind and everything in cardiology. Well, but you also ended up as an expert in imaging, you know. doing a fantastic job now to bring medicine to the people, which is more important than a lot of the science that we do. Well, CT is black and white, so it works for me. Excellent. Do you look back and think you would rather have followed a different career? Are you happy with cardiology? No, I would do exactly the same. Within cardiology, if I had my time again, I would probably do a bit of interventional cardiology as well. But, you know, I'm very happy with imaging and, you know, I'm very, very happy with the path that I chose and flip it, obviously. Would you encourage your kids to do medicine these days? That's a different question. You know, I think Australia is a wonderful country because no matter which profession you choose, you can succeed and make a wonderful living. I and you know how long medicine takes and how many years of hard work and studying are involved. So, you know, I'm not sure if I would recommend it to my children. I would let them decide and look at what they're good at. So that's a different question, you know. I think it's an amazing, we do have an amazing opportunity. We really have a privileged job. The government supports us with Medicare. Our patients trust us. We have the chance to make a real and meaningful difference in people's lives on a daily basis. It's an incredibly nourishing opportunity and something I don't take for granted, but I agree. The journey's long and you wouldn't recommend it to your kids necessarily. Unless they're really interested in it, of course. Yeah, unless they're ready to roll their sleeves up. Well... I've got plenty more to say about why I ended up in cardiology. Some of the other specialties I just couldn't see myself doing. But I'm pretty comfortable in the chair I sit in most days, as it sounds like you are. Anything you want to wrap up with, Karim? Because we'll call this one to an end. I think it was an interesting discussion. As always. I'm going to wrap it up there. For those who are listening, I hope you found that just a little bit interesting. Drop us a note. You know the email address. Until next time, thank you so much for joining us and please don't die from a heart attack. Goodbye. You have been listening to another podcast from Dr. Warrick. Visit his website at drWarrickbishop.com for the latest news on heart disease. If you love this podcast, feel free to leave us a review.
