5 Reasons Why You Should Consider Pathology

Hoover  17 Mar, 2007  Residency Training

Most students go to medical school because they want to care for patients in the traditional sense. This includes physical exams, following up on labs, making treatment decisions, and a whole lot more.

Unfortunately, most medical schools don’t promote Pathology as much as they should. It’s not part of the core rotation curriculum during your junior year, and if you want to see what a pathologist actually does, you’ll need to set a block of time aside for an elective rotation as a senior student. Despite this, I do think that people are catching on.

If you haven’t given pathology some serious consideration, here is why you should:

1. No Patient Contact

You get to work with people, it’s just that they are other doctors. You are the “doctor’s doctor.” There is no rounding, no morning CBC to follow up on, no SOAP notes, and no physical exams at 5:30 am. Pages from the nursing staff are eliminated. Did that chest X-ray not get done this morning even though it was written for? Not your problem.

2. Good Hours During Residency

You can sit back and really appreciate a normal work day even during residency in most pathology training programs. As Panda Bear mentions, pathology comes very close to 40 hour work weeks even during training. Outside of dermatology and perhaps opthalmology, this is pretty hard to come by.

Pathology Salary3. The Money Is Great

Pathologists get paid extremely well, especially considering the amount of time that they work. Salary data is from the Modern Healthcare Physician Compensation Review [PDF], and includes several data sources per specialty. According to the image to your right, the average annual salary for pathology is $254,398.

4. Almost No Call

What little call you’ll experience in pathology can all be done from home. I’ve never talked to any pathology attending or resident who has to take in-house call. The work just doesn’t require it. The dreaded “q3 call” won’t even be in your vocabulary, and you’ll cringe as you see residents in other specialties getting killed by a brutal call schedule.

5. Laid Back Work

Where else can you spend every other day or so with a nice cup of coffee getting your work done as you look into a microscope? Need to look something up or do some reading? You have time. None of the residents in pathology that I’ve ever spoken to relayed any feelings of being “rushed” or “not having enough time to complete work.” The work is laid back, and so are the people that go into pathology to begin with.

Don’t Give In To Stereotypes

I think too many medical students see pathology as a “weird” specialty. Students have been stereotyping specialties ever since they began medical school. As mentioned earlier, students don’t see pathology for what it is, but instead look at it as “nontraditional medicine.”

Don’t give in to these stereotypes and feel that you have to practice traditional medicine in order to be a physician. See specialties for what they are, and realize that you too can have a good life.

Don’t always try to read between the lines. The writing is on the wall.

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15 Comments so far »

  1. Cherokee said

    March 17 2007 @ 1:11 pm

    You’re stealing my thunder, Hoover. I was gonna post something like this… ;)

    Excellent post, and from what I can tell it’s all true. I think the only exception is if you go to a “big name” pathology program like Wash U, Mayo, Hopkins, or some other Ivy League or top school program. Then you’ll do 80 hours because the competition is so fierce that they don’t have to appeal to anyone.

    At programs I interviewed at, they were interested in recruiting. It felt good…and I’m an average-to-mediocre student on paper. But I work well with people and I’m easy to get along with, or so I’d like to think.

  2. Cherokee said

    March 17 2007 @ 1:17 pm

    I also looked at the 2007 NRMP match data, and from 2003-2007 the number (%) of U.S. students matching into path really hasn’t changed. It’s hovering under 60%. I think 57% for this year.

    So I think most of that change was before 2003. Correct me if I’m wrong. So that’s even more of a reason to go into path. It still hasn’t been discovered, and/or most people would rather suffer in traditional clinical medicine.

    Some people on SDN in the path forum claim that path is overcrowded, too many residency positions, blah blah blah. It’s something to consider, but you also need to do something that you’re happy doing. That’ll make you better at it in the long run.

    So, Hoover, are you going to reenter the match into path when you get tired of all the $$$ and free time you have? :-P

    To all non-pathology attendings: PREROUND THIS, BITCH!

  3. Hoover said

    March 17 2007 @ 1:19 pm

    Oops, sorry about that Cherokee.

    I’m sure you can still come up with some killer pathology posts.

    =D

    I didn’t think about the Ivy League programs, but I can see where that would happen.

    Edit: Cherokee, if I did anything in medicine it would most likely be path.

  4. vijay said

    March 17 2007 @ 2:55 pm

    sure… of late, non clinical specialities have become a fad since u have less competition and with growing number of medical schools, you are in good demand..

  5. John said

    March 17 2007 @ 11:52 pm

    This article makes some excellent points, and although I am not in Path I had strongly considered it.

    Also consider- they have the final word often times on diagnosis. This can be good or bad depending on you view and level of responsibility that you crave. I think it is good personally.

    How many times have you seen any doctors arguing with the pathologist at conferences?- Never They try to flame ER, primary teams, and radiology all the time (Surgeons retroscopes are astoundingly accurate)-But rare in Path

  6. Hoover said

    March 18 2007 @ 1:06 am

    Also everybody is an amateur radiologist - EM docs, family docs, trauma docs, etc…but how many times have you seen an amateur path doc? Never.

  7. Sean said

    March 18 2007 @ 10:36 am

    Come on, can’t we keep the cat in the bag for one more year, so I can match stress free? :-P

  8. Jacq said

    March 18 2007 @ 2:32 pm

    Shhhhh! Let’s try and keep this goodie on the down low please :)

  9. Zuwie said

    March 18 2007 @ 8:55 pm

    I’ve seen plenty of former clinicians who switched to path but have yet to meet a former pathologist who switched to clinical medicine. If at any time during your third year you feel like you miss the first two, then you should seriously consider path.

  10. Cherokee said

    March 18 2007 @ 9:34 pm

    I think some surgeons want to be amateur pathologists. That is a drawback of pathology…you have to talk to SURGEONS!

    Scope time:
    Dr. Surgeon: “So, are those cells?”
    Dr. Pathologist: “Well done.”

  11. Med School Hell » Can't Match Derm? Try Derm Path Instead said

    June 27 2007 @ 12:18 am

    […] it were me it’d be pathology over dermatology hands down. I do predict that pathology will be getting more competitive in the near […]

  12. Eric said

    July 25 2007 @ 11:16 am

    What about the potential of pathological slide interpretation being outsourced like radiology sometime in the near future? A quick google search of “pathology outsourcing” will show multiple companies that are already making it a reality, and most articles I’ve read concerning the threat of outsourcing to medicine suggest that radio and path are the top two candidates.

  13. Hoover said

    July 25 2007 @ 8:11 pm

    That’s certainly a concern Eric. However, the digital media of radiology studies make it slightly easier to outsource radiology reads moreso than pathology slides.

    Until pathology goes to a fully digitized format, it most likely won’t be cost-effective to prepare slides and then ship them to another location for outsourced reading.

  14. LifeSucks said

    April 1 2008 @ 12:54 pm

    Is there anyway after doing my PGY-1 this year that I can switch to pathology next year? Would I have to reenter the Match? Would my current medicine program write me a mean letter just because I bailed out of their 3 yr commitment? [I should say ‘unwritten’ 3 yr agreement since my contract is only for 1 yr after all.]

  15. Dave said

    October 26 2008 @ 2:54 pm

    The OP is absolutely right about one thing. Path is becoming competitive. Applications from US seniors are up 33% this year. Some places have more than _four hundred_ applications from US Seniors. The typical rate is about 250-300, with 300 or so IMGs. Pathology is going to go the way of Radiation Oncology if this holds. This could be bad too; I personally love my histology and pathology rotations, enjoy slides and making diagnosis, and research. But if people are going into path for the wrong reasons, what does that say? Well at any rate, with the downturn in the economy med schools are going to have 100,000 people applying for 16,000 ish spots and if there is massive competition for pathology, radiation oncology etc, then there will still be good people doing surgery.

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