Sounds like they do not have the equivalent of a "clinician/educator" track, and only have the equivalent of "clinician/scholar" track. That is interesting. My impression is that quite a few of their faculty are clinician/educator types.
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Sounds like they do not have the equivalent of a "clinician/educator" track, and only have the equivalent of "clinician/scholar" track. That is interesting. My impression is that quite a few of their faculty are clinician/educator types.
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I don't know what they do or do not have so I can't comment. I never had an opportunity to go visit there and at this point, I really don't care. I'm starting a job that I'm really happy with so whatever is in the past is in the past.
Those are the ones who got to stay. Having spoken with a quite famous one who had to leave, times changed. There really is pressure to get grants these days, which is why you see six MD Anderson jobs popping up virtually every other year, something not seen in general. The place is intensely subspecialized, so there is a big risk of going there if you think you might wind up in general practice. You would then have spent three years studying, say, cancerous lung pathology and be unable to read out breast biopsies.
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On the subject of jobs, I have spoken with several attendings recently about the job situation in pathology. These were all academic pathologists and they were from 3 different programs. Basically they all laughed out loud at the assertion that there are no jobs available for new trainees. All of them literally laughed out loud in a mocking voice. They say there are tons of jobs in academics, its just that nobody wants them because everyone is looking for some private gig where they go home at 5 and get paid big $$$. They all said that pathology programs are not training enough residents because academic places can't find anyone and there are supposedly not enough residents at programs now to even cover all the services. If they could get approval for more residency spots they would have many more (and they are all actively pushing their respective GME offices to get more spots).
For the record, I'm not saying that I agree with them, so don't shoot the messenger. The pathologists in their generation all came of age in truly dry times though, so the job market now looks like a dream to them. I suppose its all a matter of perspective.
For the record, I'm not saying that I agree with them, so don't shoot the messenger. The pathologists in their generation all came of age in truly dry times though, so the job market now looks like a dream to them. I suppose its all a matter of perspective.
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Boy Pathwrath, LADoc and exPCM and friends are going to laugh at this.
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I actually agree that there are a ton of jobs in academics. There are academic positions open all over the place. Granted most of these positions are probably difficult to fill because of the lack of leadership or difficult personalities (either in the department or external).
The private practice jobs are a different story. There are plenty of private practice jobs looking to take advantage of new trainees. Some of the stories I have heard from our recent graduates applying for private positions are laughable. One of our fellows told me "there are plenty of jobs, just very few good jobs." That is the truth. Like the rest of life, it is not what you know but who you know.
The private practice jobs are a different story. There are plenty of private practice jobs looking to take advantage of new trainees. Some of the stories I have heard from our recent graduates applying for private positions are laughable. One of our fellows told me "there are plenty of jobs, just very few good jobs." That is the truth. Like the rest of life, it is not what you know but who you know.
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There is no messenger to shoot. This is abundantly clear. I've asserted this in the past too. Many trainees in pathology just are not interested in an academic career and there's nothing wrong with that. And you can't force people to do anything. Furthermore, increasing the number of residency spots is not going to magically solve the problem of filling the vacancies in academic pathology departments. The excess # of trainees aren't necessarily going to go into academics if they don't want to. Even if they do, they may not stay. The real question is not "How do we fill the vacancies in academics?" but instead should be "How do we make academics BETTER and MORE APPEALING to candidates?"
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That is absolutely true. This is academics chance to draw people back in and revitalize academics with new, fresh, blood. There are plenty of ways to make academics better and more appealing. Lets see if the chairmans and department directors can do it.
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Start academics at 250K Mon-Fri, 9-5, no weekends and no call will do the trick.
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There is NO lack of jobs in pathology. Virtually every single one of our resident/fellowship graduates were offered every job they interviewed for in the supposedly "tough" job markets of CA and Manhattan. They placed or were offered spots in private practice and/or academic positions in Manhattan(new york not manhattan beach), SF/OAKLAND/BAY AREA, Oregon, San Luis Obispo, LA, Laguna Beach (and other orange county areas), South Bay, and San Diego.
edit: The jobs were found via word of mouth and also posted in job bulletins.
edit: The jobs were found via word of mouth and also posted in job bulletins.
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It is heartening to see that people are posting that jobs are available, and that residents and fellows are actually obtaining good jobs. The major concern on this forum is that good people are discouraged from considering a career in pathology because of unfounded internet rumors. Students considering a career in pathology are strongly encouraged to read the peer-reviewed literature which shows that jobs are available and that both private practice and academic groups recently hired and were planning to hire (Arch Pathology and Lab Medicine, 2077:131, 545).
In a competetive job market in Boston, our Department has hired a number of new faculty and we anticipate recruiting additional faculty in the coming year. The people we recently hired are posted on our website (http://www.bumc.bu.edu/busm-pathology/chairmans-blog/).
To state this clearly, there are many good jobs for excellent candidates.
Dan Remick, M.D.
Professor and Chair, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center
In a competetive job market in Boston, our Department has hired a number of new faculty and we anticipate recruiting additional faculty in the coming year. The people we recently hired are posted on our website (http://www.bumc.bu.edu/busm-pathology/chairmans-blog/).
To state this clearly, there are many good jobs for excellent candidates.
Dan Remick, M.D.
Professor and Chair, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center
My bloated residency department is in the process of decimating a private path practice at an affiliated hospital, upon which the pathologists there--alums of the program, no less--will be given an offer they can't refuse. I advised one of the lucky pathologists to look into Canada.
So yeah, there are a lot of academic "jobs" out there.
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I love how we always have to condition the jobs discussion with the statement that there are jobs for excellent candidates. I'll be honest I assume that I am niether in the top or bottom 20% of pathologists skillwise (whatever that means) So I am more or less average - somewhere in the middle not the greatest but far from dangerous. With a few years experience I can tell you that the job market is dismal for sure. Major cities have so many new pathos competing for jobs that offers are insulting. If you want to earn a living many docs need to go to fairly out of the way places - and if culturally that's diificult for you - good luck with the alternative paying your loans, and the mortgage on your nice condo with your 175K before taxes. Simply stated - we are massively overtraining! I've said it many times before, so I am just beating a dead horse. But I personally think that I am doing med students a service by letting them know the truth about the pathologists employment situation.
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Having followed these job threads for some time now, it seems as if the job market is not great but not crap (crap: not able to find a job in the whole country). If you want to live on the West Coast, you may have trouble finding a job, unless you have connections, found out about a job by word of mouth or just get plain lucky.
If you are willing to live in the boondocks, the job market is good to....great?
If you are willing to live in the midwest (or any place other than the desirable areas), but not particularly the boondocks, the market is good.
There are jobs, but not all jobs are appealing.
Keep yourself in the game by being a strong candidate and by networking. If you dont have these two qualities, the job market will suck.
Overall, I think the Path job market could be VERY GOOD like some other fields (like rads) but is not. The reasons for this I'm sure are many, but I don't want to get into a debate about this.
Once you hear about ppl complaining about the job market, it tells you market isn't great...you never hear about any other specialty complaining about jobs like we do.
That is a summary of what I think the Path job market to be. If you disagree let me know.
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I've said this in the past too. I have always felt uneasy with qualifying that sentence with the word "excellent" and using that as an argument for a great job market. I think a job market that caters to excellent candidates only is far from great. As folks in the medical profession accrue massive amounts of debt, all of them should be given enough chances in the job market to make ends meet. We don't want doctors to be living on the street begging for spare change, do we?
This is going to sound simplistic, I realize, but I think there are at least 6 types of candidates coming out of training:
(a) Good candidates from good programs.
(b) Good candidates from crappy programs.
(c) Mediocre candidates from good programs.
(d) Mediocre candidates from crappy programs.
(e) FAIL candidates from good programs.
(f) FAIL candidates from crappy programs.
At a minimum, a job market should cater to the first two. That doesn't mean that the job market is good. A good job market caters to the top four groups. A great job market caters to all six (demand>>>supply).
That's it! I said it!
To be honest, from a med student's perspective, I don't feel very convinced that the job market is good. I am glad that BUPath & UCLApath are posting the positive views on the job market. However, I think to fairly say the job market is good, you have to 1) compare to other specialties and see if pathology is comparable, and 2) not just look at the job market situation for graduates of top programs (I assume including UCLA path).
What I was told was that to be a good job candidate, you usually have to do 2 fellowships. That is 6 years of training! This makes pathology residency even longer than surgery, internal medicine (with a subspecialty fellowship included), and many other specialties. In the end, you have to be top 25% of a good-top residency program to land a good job in a semi-desirable location. What happens to the remaining 75%? Students are not greedy. We just need to hear that the income and stability of working in pathology is comparable to other specialties, esp since you are really talking about 6 years of training! I really enjoyed path, and still come to this forum to see if there are more positive spins to pathology. However, at least for me, I just don't see it either from this forum or from the pathology attendings I've worked with. Income wise, I would think pathologists who work in academic settings make far less than say GI, rad, cardio, ophtho, derm, orthopedics etc. We have loans and have to pay back. You can say the above named specialites are tough to get into. However, the top candidates in med school can make it into those specialities, and it's hard to convince these people to pursue path, esp in academic settings when you are offered 120k and are asked to come in with your own grant! You frequently hear things like "if you are an excellent candidate," or "if you can't imagine doing anything else but pathology, then go for it." I think smart med students can pick up what these phrases mean.
What I was told was that to be a good job candidate, you usually have to do 2 fellowships. That is 6 years of training! This makes pathology residency even longer than surgery, internal medicine (with a subspecialty fellowship included), and many other specialties. In the end, you have to be top 25% of a good-top residency program to land a good job in a semi-desirable location. What happens to the remaining 75%? Students are not greedy. We just need to hear that the income and stability of working in pathology is comparable to other specialties, esp since you are really talking about 6 years of training! I really enjoyed path, and still come to this forum to see if there are more positive spins to pathology. However, at least for me, I just don't see it either from this forum or from the pathology attendings I've worked with. Income wise, I would think pathologists who work in academic settings make far less than say GI, rad, cardio, ophtho, derm, orthopedics etc. We have loans and have to pay back. You can say the above named specialites are tough to get into. However, the top candidates in med school can make it into those specialities, and it's hard to convince these people to pursue path, esp in academic settings when you are offered 120k and are asked to come in with your own grant! You frequently hear things like "if you are an excellent candidate," or "if you can't imagine doing anything else but pathology, then go for it." I think smart med students can pick up what these phrases mean.
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Again we have Dr. Remick posting here about the job market. Residency programs have a vested interest in preserving their supply of cheap resident labor.
As I have posted before: THE PATHOLOGY JOB MARKET SUCKS!
Ask any physician recruiter (just takes one phone call).
Look at the CAP website - a paltry number (less than thirty non-military jobs) of job postings.
Here is a letter which illustrates how we had 95 candidates competing for one pathology job in Tucson AZ.
To Whom It May Concern:
Please let this letter serve as recommendation for Amanda Robinson and American Lab Staffing for outstanding efforts in finding a new team member for Foothills Pathology and Northwest Hospital. We engaged the services of ALS in mid-November and hired our new Pathologist on February 1, 2004.
Ms. Robinson personally screened 95 candidates for our Pathologist opening during December 2003 and January 2004. She saved us valuable time in doing the legwork of marketing and advertising, CV review and prescreening of those candidates. She chose nine candidates who met our strict qualifications and presented those CVs to me. Ms. Robinson personally evaluated all candidates. She performed prescreening interviews and reference checks. After narrowing the search down to a handful, Ms. Robinson suggested that we look at one more candidate before a final decision was made. She brought a candidate to our attention who was still in fellowship training. His background and accomplishments were right in line with the type of Pathologist for which we were looking. Rather than screening him out (a current fellow was not initially in our candidate approval criteria), she presented him as a viable candidate. By taking Ms. Robinson's suggestion to pursue this candidate, we were able to determine that his skills were a perfect match to our needs. After an extensive interview and review of his credentials, along with Ms. Robinson's recommendation, we offered a job to this candidate and he accepted.
Ms. Robinson has a keen understanding of how to match qualified candidates with an institution's needs. Thanks to Ms. Robinson's exceptional diligence and promptness, we now have a highly qualified and respected Pathologist on our team. I am pleased to recommend Ms. Robinson and American Lab Staffing as an exceptional pathology recruiting service. I have also forwarded information about American Lab Staffing to our corporate headquarters for future needs.
Vicki Edwards
Director, Business Development
Northwest Medical Center
Tucson, Arizona
http://www.americanlabstaffing.com/testimonials.html
From the same physician recruiting website:
# The job market for pathologists today has improved only slightly since 1998.
# The number of pathologists looking for jobs still outpaces the number of opportunities available.
FYI 1998 was the era of the pathology job market meltdown. The influential leaders in pathology today are many of the same people who did nothing to avert that disaster:
http://philgmh.tripod.com/CIPJM.html
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1. 2 fellowships? Wow. That just shows you how much time pathology residents spend doing things that have no relevance to the practice of pathology. Apparently internal medicine residents can learn to take full responsibility for a patient's care and make big time treatment decisions (even at crappy programs where they most assuredly don't have "excellent candidates") in 3 years but a pathology resident needs 4 years plus a fellowship (or 2?) to sign out general surgpath cases. Laughable, yet that is the norm in pathology.
2. This is the kicker. Academic pathologists don't make even close to what academic GI docs, rads, or whoever. Until this gap is closed few pathologists will want to take academic jobs and the situation of rare good private jobs and abundant academic jobs will persist.
3. Yes, we all know what those phrases mean. It must be really discouraging to hear things like that as a med student.
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Bear in mind that most applicants apply to AP/CP residency. So if you're set on being marketable in a community practice, you have to do it. This doesn't make a 1-2 yrs of fellowship so outlandish, given that it will equal a full four years of anatomic or clinical pathology (or blood bank..you get the picture).
You have to play the game of AP/CP to be marketable, but you also need two more years to be GOOD at what you do. Doesn't sound crazy to me.
I am actually a bit upset. Have to decide on a new specialty very soon. Not completely terrible, but I am still upset.
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from one med student to another, I have heard many other physician other than pathologists complain about their jobs. I know a some PP family med docs (one in cali and one in the SE) that are on call 24/7 and hardly making any $$. Sure, the job market for FP may give them the the flexibility to make next to nothing anywhere in the country they want but they are still slaves to the system. I also personally know of an INTERVENTIONAL CARDIOLOGIST that was run out of town because of the same kind of slimy partnership tricks that some complain of on the path forum. I have heard from numerous pathologist that i "have nothing to worry about" and that i will be "absolutely fine" in choosing pathology as a career. They also acknowledge though that the market is competitive, mostly for FMG's though. The paths i have talked to are all very happy with their careers. Compare now to most of the surgeons ive talked to, most are bitter and unhappy with things. This is probably b/c they have no life outside of the OR.
here is a link to a physician salary survey that I have found to be fairly in line with what attendings/residents say as well.
http://www.allied-physicians.com/salary_surveys/physician-salaries.htm
the path salaries listed compares to Derm, ENT, and optho, and are higher than Psych, Peds, OB/GYN, FP, and Neurology.
I think that that there is a pervasive inferiority complex on this boards and/or people come here to complain about things.
I am sick and tired of this back and forth tirade.
I think the job market is VERY SUBOPTIMAL and in DRASTIC NEED FOR IMPROVEMENT in COMPARISON to OTHER MEDICAL FIELDS (TO BE DONE BY SLASHING RESIDENCY SLOTS IN HALF AND TAKING ONLY THE BEST CANDIDATES).
I am talking about PRIVATE PRACTICE.
BEST WAY TO LEARN ABOUT THIS IS TO TRY FINDING A "DECENT PRIVATE PRACTICE JOB"(GOOD LOCATION, REASONABLE WORK HOURS, 225+ STARTING PAY WITH GUARANTEED PARTNERSHIP IN 2-3 YEARS) AND THEN COME HERE AND POST.
BEST OF LUCK.
I think the job market is VERY SUBOPTIMAL and in DRASTIC NEED FOR IMPROVEMENT in COMPARISON to OTHER MEDICAL FIELDS (TO BE DONE BY SLASHING RESIDENCY SLOTS IN HALF AND TAKING ONLY THE BEST CANDIDATES).
I am talking about PRIVATE PRACTICE.
BEST WAY TO LEARN ABOUT THIS IS TO TRY FINDING A "DECENT PRIVATE PRACTICE JOB"(GOOD LOCATION, REASONABLE WORK HOURS, 225+ STARTING PAY WITH GUARANTEED PARTNERSHIP IN 2-3 YEARS) AND THEN COME HERE AND POST.
BEST OF LUCK.
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I have been posting. I had two of these offers and then stopped looking for more.
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Yes, but not everyone is forum admin.
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I didn't get my job because I'm a forum admin.
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Well, it does sound crazy to me. That means that we are spending SO MUCH TIME doing things that are irrelevant to the real world practice of pathology. Why can an average medical student match into an average internal medicine program and in 3 years be ready to manage patients, make decisions independently, and function competently in their own practice while an average medical student can match into an average pathology program but can't function competently in community practice after 6 years (two of which are "fellowships")? It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.
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If, as a duly trained and boarded physician, one cannot find a "good" job offer in the city of choice, much less state or region of choice, then excess supply exists.
There is no physician shortage.
There is no physician shortage.
Thank you for this comment!
I just don't understand why many attendings at academic centers can't see this, or can't understand this. Even worse, I think some attendings who see this don't share this reality to students who rotate through. Only a few are willing to talk about it, almost at a time that's too late for some of us. I wonder if the attendings who are paid <125k in academic centers are just serenading themselves into thinking this is the norm, and this income is terrific for 4 yrs med school (on loan)+ 4 yrs of residency + 2 yrs of fellowship. It really is not comparable to many other specialties that require shorter residency training than 6 years! Not being able to pick a desired location is also laughable to the more competitive specialties. Sooner or later, this will make pathology less appealing any student. I even have a MSTP friend going into anesthesiology come ask me if I know pathology job market sucks. I was even told I should be careful. How sad! I don't know if this is just a simple supply & demand issue, though.
I think if 2 fellowship is going to be a new trend, AP/CP should be shortened into 3 years, leaving only 3 months for CP. Otherwise, 4+2 yrs of training and end up in either a boondock location or <$120k really isn't that appealing. I heard that some subspecialty fellowships are even 2 yrs on its own, and I guess if you do 2 of those, it would be 4 yrs of fellowship!! Isn't that crazy? You might as well get another bachelor's degree....
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Dear Junior members,
I have been posting for some time about my trials in relocating to Pacific Northwest...anyway I am here and my job which was supposed to be a great job got slammed by the conomy and lessened to part-time and less that the pay of a locums...I tell all of you if someone has you sign a contract..then make them adhere to that contract...do not let them whittle it away...
I am now trying to supplement a miniscule salary with locums out of state...
tho' i just recently was offered a supplemental teaching job...
It is a jungle out there...and i was in that situation back in the mid 90's...so persevere..things may look up....as this stuff goes in cycles
I have been posting for some time about my trials in relocating to Pacific Northwest...anyway I am here and my job which was supposed to be a great job got slammed by the conomy and lessened to part-time and less that the pay of a locums...I tell all of you if someone has you sign a contract..then make them adhere to that contract...do not let them whittle it away...
I am now trying to supplement a miniscule salary with locums out of state...
tho' i just recently was offered a supplemental teaching job...
It is a jungle out there...and i was in that situation back in the mid 90's...so persevere..things may look up....as this stuff goes in cycles
Oh my....
I am so sorry to hear this
Are you dermpath subspecialty-boarded? This is quite surprising to hear this.
doesn't sound very promising, though.... Do you truly recommend young starters to persevere? Or do you personally think it's more reasonable to try other specialties that you are also interested in to avoid this torture...
Very curious about this.
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Mad depressing........sucks to have gone to medical school, incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and have to face this when coming out of residency.
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The market is poor. No doubt about it.
However, if you have the right fellowship, and opened the right doors, the opportunies are incredible! I know I am a minority, just finished my fellowship in dermpath and joined a private group of 2 signing out >400 cases a day. Salary and benefits are quite generous. I feel extremely fortunate working 9-5 with a plastic surgeons salary.
Good for me..... anyway, the truth is that there are way too many pathology residents. Unless you do the right fellowship and make the right connections, your choices are very limited. I did make my own luck with hard work, but I am aware of my luck.
Pathology in general is not a good field to go into these days, residency slots need to be cut in half period. I realized this early on and went on my course. Not sure what else to say.
However, if you have the right fellowship, and opened the right doors, the opportunies are incredible! I know I am a minority, just finished my fellowship in dermpath and joined a private group of 2 signing out >400 cases a day. Salary and benefits are quite generous. I feel extremely fortunate working 9-5 with a plastic surgeons salary.
Good for me..... anyway, the truth is that there are way too many pathology residents. Unless you do the right fellowship and make the right connections, your choices are very limited. I did make my own luck with hard work, but I am aware of my luck.
Pathology in general is not a good field to go into these days, residency slots need to be cut in half period. I realized this early on and went on my course. Not sure what else to say.
OK, I'll bite. I started looking in October of last year. By January I had two such offers and a third which offered location and 3-yr partnership track but starting pay of only $180K. Now, your definition of "good location" may not be the same as mine, but these jobs were all in urban areas, by no means in the boondocks. I chose job #3 (lower pay but better benefits and more collegial work environment). And, yes, I work 8-5 most days.
Keep in mind that at the time of my job hunt, I was a practicing pathologist, about 6 years out of training, doing sporadic locums work (by choice). And I did not do any fellowships.
So there.
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Would you mind telling us about the first two offers?
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The key word there is "practicing". It is one thing to have 6 years experience, and quite another to be just be finishing residency or fellowship. Groups look at the two VERY differently when considering them for a position. I was told outright by the group that hired me that they were very apprehensive about even interviewing me because most people just out of residency/fellowship can't handle it.
When I was looking for a job, I was repeatedly told that while my CV was impressive, they really wanted someone with experience because the learning curve is so steep the first year out and that given the choice they are going to take experience. Basically, how I interpreted it is that the overall consensus is that residents are not trained to work independently and to "make the call" so when it comes time to do so, chaos ensues.
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That a sad commentary on the state of pathology training. I'm sure there are tons of surgery programs out there where the 5th year residents can't "make the call" and decide to do the appropriate operation on a patient.
Even bad residents at bad internal medicine programs are trained to "make the call". What about radiology? There are many parallels between radiology training and pathology training, yet their residents seem to get fine training, even at not-so-great programs, and are prepared to practice.
Point taken, but I don't think it's as simple as all that. I hadn't been working for 6 years when I applied. In fact, upon finishing residency in 2003, I took three years off entirely- no path whatsoever- because of illness and babies. I didn't even try looking for a job at that time. When I did go back, in 2006, it was on a part-time, locums basis with very sporadic hours (again, by choice. At that point, I didn't want to work full time). I would estimate that between 2006-2008, I worked approximately 15 weeks per year. So I was hardly a seasoned, practicing pathologist who could jump into a practice with confidence and a limited learning curve. I was a strong resident from a strong program, but that was six years ago- I was surprised by the number of offers I received given what I felt was my weak background.
Job #1: Small community hospital in a medium-sized town, 3 pathologists in a private practice group. Starting pay $250K, 3 yr partnership track, call one week per month but rarely any after-hours issues. Partners in the practice making about $320K, if they were telling me the truth. I strongly considered this job but the case load did not offer much variety and there
had been rumblings that this hospital might be absorbed by another, larger one- I wasn't certain what would become of the path dept then.
Job #2: Small community hospital in a suburb of a major urban city, 4 pathologists at the hospital but part of a much larger private practice group that covers ~10 hospitals in the area. Starting pay $235K, 2-3 yr partnership track, call similar to the above hospital. Partners making about $275K if they were being honest. Cytology and wet heme, which I really don't like, were part of this job and a big part of the reason I decided to turn it down. Also, the job involved a lot of driving around to cover different hospitals.
Job #3 (the one I chose): Large community hospital in an urban area with loose affiliation with a local med school, ~30 pathologists in the practice. Starting pay $180K, 3 yr partnership track, call once/week. Partners say they make between $350-400K most years. Almost all recent hires to the practice have made partner (the one who didn't was a bit of a crackpot) and said there was no issue with that. No cytology, no hemepath, great variety of cases and lots of specialists to show cases to. I chose this position both for the better professional environment (better cases, basically) and b/c pay, after partnership, seemed to have the most potential.
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It is 8 months after this post. I would be interested to learn if the fellows from your institution were successful in finding a position, and if they were pleased with the positions they obtained.
Dan Remick, M.D.
Boston University School of Medicine
Congratulations. It sounds like you landed a good job.
However, I don't believe your experience refutes the argument about the lack of decent jobs out there. Speaking from experience, I think the jobs you turned down were okay, not great by any means, and potentially really bad.
I realize that indebted residents reading this may think I'm overly picky, spoiled. Whatever. Let me know how you feel after five, ten years of small practice, multi-hospital commuting with the threat of absorption looming over your head, all for 250 grand. It gets old fast.
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You know--things for the last 5-6 years were never terrific for jobs in pathology, but my sense of polling the 20-30 pathologists I know coming out of their fellowships last year and this coming year is that the situtation is like a big black hole. Some of us started joking that we may do locum as grossing techs...but now it's not so funny.
Let me say it again--last year may have been bad but this year is worse. The old folks want to restock their 401s and everyone is protecting their practices in anticipation of the potential new healthcare plans being planned.
It does not seem that academics is some great refuge--there are still a lot of hiring freezes across the country. Remember for federal hiring practices all academics have to advertise their jobs---no advertisement = no job. A job may be created, but that takes time. So to say there are a good number of academic jobs would be false since if you add up all of the advertised jobs in pathoutlines/higher learning/asip/ascp/cap/nejm/jama...etc you still don't come up with enough jobs to support a fraction of the pathologists that are coming out of training this coming year.
Seriously I'm ready to signout biopsies for pennies on the dollar. Or gross in colons for nickles.
Let me say it again--last year may have been bad but this year is worse. The old folks want to restock their 401s and everyone is protecting their practices in anticipation of the potential new healthcare plans being planned.
It does not seem that academics is some great refuge--there are still a lot of hiring freezes across the country. Remember for federal hiring practices all academics have to advertise their jobs---no advertisement = no job. A job may be created, but that takes time. So to say there are a good number of academic jobs would be false since if you add up all of the advertised jobs in pathoutlines/higher learning/asip/ascp/cap/nejm/jama...etc you still don't come up with enough jobs to support a fraction of the pathologists that are coming out of training this coming year.
Seriously I'm ready to signout biopsies for pennies on the dollar. Or gross in colons for nickles.
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This must depend on your frame of reference, because to me, those job offers smallcat got sound pretty good.
Maybe I'm too easily satisfied?
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Subterfuge.
Anyone get the feeling that some of these "new posters" are just exPCM/Pathwrath in disguise? It just seems odd to me...
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Subterfuge,
No offense - but you need to wake up!
Here is a story to ponder that I learned from a book I read in a college course.
When Hitler came to power in Germany he persecuted the Jewish citizens mercilessly. About half of Germany's 600,000 Jewish citizens fled the country before WWII. The others could not bring themselves to believe that worse and worse was to follow. The thought that they would be killed either never occurred to them or was incredible. After the war a wry saying was current amongst the surviving Jewish people "The pessimists went into exile; the optimists went into the gas chambers".
I look at those who cannot see the truth regarding the dismal pathology job market as having optimism which is not based in reality. The academic path programs will never give up their cheap resident labor no matter how bad the job market is. With the mass unemployment of pathologists in the 1990's the programs continued to fill up all their slots. With the change from the 5 year to 4 year length of AP/CP residency we now have about 2200 residents in 4 years (graduating about 550 per year) when in the past we had 2200 residents in 4 years (graduating about 450 per year). The job market cannot support the increased number of graduates per year but instead of cutting back on slots the residencies have just jammed the same number of total residents into their programs.
I have read on this site that a brave resident stood up at a recent CAP resident forum and she questioned the faculty panel on the job market problem. Although I was not there I am impressed that a resident was willing to stand up and be heard.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Tl...j1gZQC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
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Godwin's law! Discussion over!
As far as the resident at the CAP forum - it wasn't really a "question" as it was a diatribe that was kind of uncomfortable to listen to and painful. It probably did a disservice to the argument she was trying to portray.
As far as the resident at the CAP forum - it wasn't really a "question" as it was a diatribe that was kind of uncomfortable to listen to and painful. It probably did a disservice to the argument she was trying to portray.
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Hah! I had to look that up, excellent!
