Switching to Path..many questions

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1. I think forensic path. would be fascinating, is there a fellowship required? What are the job op.? Does anyone know the general salary (I suspect it is low). I am asking because I have a great deal of student loans to pay off.

Yes, forensic path fellowship, one year. Jobs are available as we speak. Salary 80s-130s.

2. If a transitional yr. is not required for the incoming class of 03, then are the programs taking half as many, in order to account for those individuals COMPLETING a transitional yr in 03 and slated to enter then?

A transitional year has never been required. What was required was a "credentialing year". With could be satisfied by doing a transitional year, or doing another year of pathology and other things. The programs are taking the same number of residents. If anything it will be going up a little, since they will not have those fifth years around to help out with the work.


3. Are there any individuals who switched from a clinical program?
I would love to hear your thoughts on path.

I didn't but lots of folks in my program have. They seem to love it. We have a prior surgeon, peds, peds rehab and dentist.

4. How bad is the job market, really?

The job market is fine. All of the people in my program already have jobs lined up for when they graduate in June. And, they all had specific required areas they wanted to go. If you are more open on where you will live you will have multiple offers.

5. Does anyone have any info on the programs in CO, UT, AZ, CA?

Stanford is very prestigious. I hear the first few years there are very very tough.

Univ of Utah has an awesome web site.

Good luck. Though I must say I don't find my job much like the first two years of med school. But, not anything like the clinical years either.

hello,

great pumpkin (or any other pathologist), can you please tell me how much of your work is microscope-based? i found it difficult to interpret microscopic slides in histo. and path. courses; does that mean i'm not cut out for path?

also, how often do you do autopsies (both in residency and afterward)? thanks a lot.

The amount of time you spend looking in a microscope really depends on the rotation. For example during surgical path I probably spend 2 to 4 hours a day looking at slides. During blood bank I spend zero. Just because you didn't like or were not good at histo I wouldn't worry to much about it. Histo made me motion sick, hehe now look where I am.

Autopsy during residency, varies greatly from program to program. Here a mcv we do about 150 total a year. I did 23 my first year. Will not do any or only a couple this year and third year(on call). And, fourth year I will probably do 20ish at MCV and 20ish at the medical examiners office. At Wake Forest for example the residents do 4+ times as many.

In private practice you will do even fewer normally only a couple a month if that. Some practices do more, but most don't want anything to do with autopsy. Just a word of warning if you hate autopsy you will likely hate surgical pathology. It is basically autopsy one organ at a time.

Hehe....if you think you hate autopsy, try running across a 2 year old exhumed body! I ran across a case during my PSF last year and could've sworn the smell stayed in my nose hairs for more than a week

I agree with GP's point about Surg path being an autopsy with one organ at a time.

One thing that will help you though is your clinical knowledge and comfort with radiology when you get to Soft Tissue and Bone. Alot of those cases become much more fascinating as you look at the films before hand and then the gross specimen. The same can be said about Neuro cases.

Good luck w/your decision!