Run the heart tests: ECGs (electrocardiograms), stress tests, Holter monitors and pacemaker checks. A 2-year diploma and a national exam.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $71,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $48,000 at the lower end to about $106,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
1 to 3 years after high school, on the usual route.
$9,500 to $19,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in New Brunswick and Quebec. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Good demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$71,000
Lower end
$48,000
Upper end
$106,000
Job Bank's national median is $34 an hour, about $71,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower and upper ends are Job Bank's low and high wages for everyone in the group, $23 and $51 an hour. Hospital jobs sit on a union grid that climbs every year.
$39.54 an hour
The median in Alberta, the highest in Canada
British Columbia ($39.00) is next, Ontario sits at $34.03 and Manitoba is lowest at $32.00. On-call for the cath lab or urgent ECGs (electrocardiograms) overnight adds callback pay on top.
Roughly, all in
$9,500 to $19,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a two year public college diploma at the cheaper end, basic books and uniforms, the immunizations and police check, and the national certification exam at about $600. The high end is the same diploma at a higher tuition rate with fuller book, uniform and lab costs plus the first year of membership dues. This is one of the cheapest routes into a hospital job with a pension, and most graduates owe under $20,000. Uniforms and the required health clearances are small but real costs that people forget to budget for.
One of the cheapest routes into a hospital job with a pension. Most graduates owe under $20,000.
Defined-benefit pension
HOOPP (the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan) in Ontario hospitals. Similar plans elsewhere.
Extended health and dental
Shift premiums and on-call pay
In hospitals that run cardiac testing around the clock.
Paid vacation and sick days
Typically 3 weeks to start in a union hospital.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Short and focused. You are employable in about 2 years.
High school
Grade 12
Grade 12 English and math, plus Grade 11 or 12 biology, chemistry and physics. Algonquin also runs an entrance test.
Approved program
1 to 2 years
A 2-year college diploma (Algonquin in Ottawa, BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology)) or a shorter certificate (Mohawk, St. Clair, CCNB (Collège communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick)). Anatomy, heart rhythms, electronics, then clinical placement that may be outside your city.
Write the CSCT (Canadian Society of Cardiology Technologists) exam
After graduation
The national certification exam, offered in May and October. Pass it and you are an RCT (registered cardiology technologist).
Join your provincial association and get hired
Weeks to months
Hospitals want the RCT (registered cardiology technologist) credential even where, outside Quebec and New Brunswick, it is not the law.
Biology
Required. The heart is the whole job.
Physics
Required by most programs. Electrical signals are physics.
Math
Reading intervals and rates on a tracing.
English
You explain tests to frightened people all day.
Quebec and New Brunswick license cardiology technologists. In Quebec you must join the order of imaging and electrophysiology technologists and pass its exam; in New Brunswick you register with the provincial society, which a 2004 law made the regulator. Elsewhere the CSCT (Canadian Society of Cardiology Technologists) runs the national exam, and hospitals require the RCT (registered cardiology technologist) credential. Because the exam is national, moving provinces is easy.
In Quebec the job is regulated: you train in a 3 year French college program that covers more than the heart, then pass a professional order's exam.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary IV math (Cultural, Social and Technical) and Secondary IV Science and Technology of the Environment, or Science and the Environment.
DEC (Diploma of College Studies) in medical electrophysiology (140.A0)
3 years
A 3 year CEGEP (public college) program, in French, at Collège Ahuntsic in Montreal or Cégep de Lévis. It covers heart, brain, nerve, hearing and eye tests.
Join the order as a student
First term
The Ordre des technologues en imagerie médicale, en radio-oncologie et en électrophysiologie médicale du Québec (the order of medical imaging, radiation oncology and electrophysiology technologists). Ahuntsic lists $220 for this.
Start work as a candidate
After graduating
With a job offer and an exam booking, you can work with some limits until you pass, for up to 1 year after your diploma.
Pass the order's entry exam
June or November
Online, 150 questions over 6 hours 50 minutes, in June and November. The electrophysiology exam is in French only. $836 plus tax, up to 4 tries.
Elsewhere in Canada the national CSCT (Canadian Society of Cardiology Technologists) exam is the usual credential. In Quebec your permit comes from the order and its own exam instead. The Quebec program also trains you in EEG (electroencephalography, brain wave tests) and other nerve tests, so the job title is medical electrophysiology technologist.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Pacemaker and defibrillator device clinic
Programming and checking implanted devices. Specialized work.
Cardiac cath lab
Assisting with angiograms and stents. On-call pay and adrenaline.
Echocardiography
A separate sonography credential. Many cardiology technologists move into it.
Electrophysiology
Mapping and treating rhythm problems. A small niche in big centres.
Hospital volunteering
Shows you can handle sick and anxious people.
Comfort with computers
Every monitor and device is software.
Attention to detail
A missed rhythm on a tracing can be a missed heart attack.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Eight or 12 hours. You wheel the ECG (electrocardiogram) cart to the emergency department and the wards, sticking electrodes on chests and reading the tracing for anything urgent. Back in the lab you run stress tests, walking patients on a treadmill while you watch their rhythm, and fit Holter monitors people wear home for a day or two. Afternoons might be device checks for pacemaker patients. Rhythm alarms and cardiac arrests break the routine.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The CSCT (Canadian Society of Cardiology Technologists) has just over 1,800 registered members across Canada. Job Bank expects a strong risk of labour shortage for the occupation nationally from 2024 to 2033.
Willem Einthoven built the first practical electrocardiograph in the early 1900s and won the 1924 Nobel Prize in medicine for it. The letters he chose for the waves, P, Q, R, S and T, are still what technologists read today.
Norman Holter, an American physicist, built the first wearable heart monitor. Early versions weighed as much as a backpack. Today's are the size of a matchbox and patients wear them for 24 hours to two weeks.
With only two sittings a year, failing the national certification exam or missing a sitting means months before your next try, so most programs time graduation right before an exam date.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Diagnostics and lab first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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