Job Market in Radiology

[Rad2013]

Required focus/thinking needed decreases with experience.

Eventually each structure evaluated on a case breaks down to something like this…


Clearly normal -> easy
Benign/almost certainly benign -> easy
Clearly abnormal with obvious diagnosis -> easy
Clearly abnormal but exact diagnosis is less clear -> still pretty easy if the differential diagnosis is obvious
Clearly abnormal and WTF is this? -> slower, read up on some possible diagnoses, do your best


This isn’t perfect… but you can see how most cases will end up being easy or pretty easy. This is of course after you’ve put in the training of residency and fellowship.

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[2brads]

Does the job really feel easy to you? Like I get that its not physically taxing, but it seems like it requires a great amount of sustained focus/thinking all day long? Just curious as a current med student considering radiology

Sorry for the confusion. I meant: For my job in particular (money/effort) it is relatively easy. I didn’t mean to give the impression that radiology itself is easy because it is not. And there are certainly jobs that are constantly or mostly difficult. The job does get less taxing with experience, but there will always be misses and things that you do not know. As you get older, you come to accept these things in a more healthy way.

That being said, when a radiologist became visibly flustered or angry and complained about the work, I used to have a mentor that would say, “Look (radiologist), this isn’t ditch digging.” His point being that we are in a privileged position without physical risk and are paid handsomely - so get some perspective. It makes more sense to people who weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

 

[Taurus]

Does the job really feel easy to you? Like I get that its not physically taxing, but it seems like it requires a great amount of sustained focus/thinking all day long? Just curious as a current med student considering radiology

Radiology is like taking a test. If you don’t mind taking tests, you’ll be fine. You can pick fields with more patient interaction and procedures like IR and mammo too.

 

[qwerty89]

This is 100% true and I’ve lived it. The radiology job market in my city is garbage, mainly because the main groups have all colluded to have identical exploitative partnership tracks. This then affects the academic market because they only have to offer slightly above what the crappy partnership tracks offer.

It’s an amazing market for radiology right now…in other states. In mine, it’s crap.

Atlanta?