Typical day in Pathology

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nerfherder

nerfherder

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Hi everyone!
I'm nearly the end of my third and for the last few months I've been considering doing pathology. My only problem is that I don't have a path rotation until Sept. The one thing I am really curious about is what a normal day is like for a resident or an attending. Are hours spent doing signout, like IM rounds are? Do you look at slides the entire day? Is this all done in a room with other pathologists or is everyone sequestered into thier own area? I realize a picture is worth a thousand words, but until September I am just on the outside looking in. Thanks :confused:
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nerfherder said:
Hi everyone!
I'm nearly the end of my third and for the last few months I've been considering doing pathology. My only problem is that I don't have a path rotation until Sept. The one thing I am really curious about is what a normal day is like for a resident or an attending. Are hours spent doing signout, like IM rounds are? Do you look at slides the entire day? Is this all done in a room with other pathologists or is everyone sequestered into thier own area? I realize a picture is worth a thousand words, but until September I am just on the outside looking in. Thanks :confused:
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As a med student on an AP rotation, your days will probably revolve around attending signout. Basically, you sit at the multi-headed scope with the attending and residents as they assign and dictate diagnoses associated with specimens that were grossed/processed the previous day. Some signouts last a a few hours and perhaps other signouts last a bit longer.

As a med student, you may or may not take part in the grossing or previewing process which typically happens during late afternoon and evening. The pathology folks will probably let you go home after signout but if you're interested in sticking around because you're considering pathology as a career, I don't see why they would have a problem with this.

When you're not attending signout, you may also take part in autopsies. So that will add variety to the pathology rotation routine.

As for the day-to-day life of a resident, it depends on the rotation he/she is on. Furthermore, the same rotations can differ in schedule between different instutions. For instance, at some places, residents on surgical pathology rotations go through 2, 3, or 4 day cycles during which a given day is spent just grossing, just previewing, or just signing out, or a combination thereof. Days can be long depending on specimen load.
 
nerfherder said:
Hi everyone!
I'm nearly the end of my third and for the last few months I've been considering doing pathology. My only problem is that I don't have a path rotation until Sept. The one thing I am really curious about is what a normal day is like for a resident or an attending. Are hours spent doing signout, like IM rounds are? Do you look at slides the entire day? Is this all done in a room with other pathologists or is everyone sequestered into thier own area? I realize a picture is worth a thousand words, but until September I am just on the outside looking in. Thanks :confused:
Click to expand...

Surg path days here (for me)

6:30-8, take care of issues, organize for the day, check emails, etc
8-9 conference
9-12 signout
12-1 lunch
1-2 conference
2-5 gross specimens, preview slides for next day, deal with clinicians calling and paging me, troubleshoot histology issues, etc
5-6 maybe another conference
6-until I'm done finish previewing, grossing specimens (usually between 7-9pm, sometimes done at 5pm, sometimes there until midnight).

Signout varies from 1 hour to more than 6 hours depending on the volume and the attending. You are interrupted on certain services for frozen sections or clinicians concerns. You are not looking at a microscope ALL day, but do for a few hours.

Clinical path rotations:
8-10 conferences
10-12 hang around the lab, read stuff, troubleshoot, etc etc
12-1 lunch
1-5 same as from 10-12.

I should say though, there are a bunch of teaching sessions that go on during the day in clinical path rotations, some are related to signout of certain tests, others are simply educational. You get interrupted for things here and there. Generally you also give presentations once or twice a week that you have to prepare for.

Autopsy depends on whether there are autopsies, obviously.
 
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yaah said:
Surg path days here (for me)

6:30-8, take care of issues, organize for the day, check emails, etc
8-9 conference
9-12 signout
12-1 lunch
1-2 conference
2-5 gross specimens, preview slides for next day, deal with clinicians calling and paging me, troubleshoot histology issues, etc
5-6 maybe another conference
6-until I'm done finish previewing, grossing specimens (usually between 7-9pm, sometimes done at 5pm, sometimes there until midnight).

Signout varies from 1 hour to more than 6 hours depending on the volume and the attending. You are interrupted on certain services for frozen sections or clinicians concerns. You are not looking at a microscope ALL day, but do for a few hours.

Clinical path rotations:
8-10 conferences
10-12 hang around the lab, read stuff, troubleshoot, etc etc
12-1 lunch
1-5 same as from 10-12.

I should say though, there are a bunch of teaching sessions that go on during the day in clinical path rotations, some are related to signout of certain tests, others are simply educational. You get interrupted for things here and there. Generally you also give presentations once or twice a week that you have to prepare for.

Autopsy depends on whether there are autopsies, obviously.
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Mu-st Re-sist Go-ing to Pa-tho-lo-gy.

Man, this is sweet. Dam, I wish I never read your post. Before I was debateing between 3 speciality choises (Peds, Gyn, GS) now, Pathology came back to haunt me AGIAN. :(

The only reason keeping me away from Pathology is the "inability to treat the disease that you just diagnosed". It is like a half ass job, and this frustrates me.

But other than that, Pathology is the coolest thing ever.

Thanks a lot, Yaah. :(
 
Well, if it's treating disease you want - realize that more than half the time the treatment doesn't even work very well, if at all. And many treatments do more harm than good. And if it doesn't work, it's your fault.

You read right that my normal day on surg path went from 6:30 to 9pm, right? Because that isn't considered a nice work week for many!
 
yaah said:
You read right that my normal day on surg path went from 6:30 to 9pm, right? Because that isn't considered a nice work week for many!
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Yeah, I'm gonna have to get used to these kind of long days. The first two years for me is gonna be a lotta work.
 
yaah said:
You read right that my normal day on surg path went from 6:30 to 9pm, right? Because that isn't considered a nice work week for many!
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I agree with you on your view on medical treatments. However surgical treatments, I think, are a different story....That is why I am thinking about surgical fields like GS and Gyn.

BUT

I HATE clinical medicine. God, I HATE Rounding and the USELESS talking, talking, talking......

And for the 6am-9pm-midnight thing, Well, it beats spending the same amount of hours as a medicine or surgery resident!
 
Leukocyte said:
I agree with you on your view on medical treatments. However surgical treatments, I think, are a different story....That is why I am thinking about surgical fields like GS and Gyn.
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You're right regarding surgical treatments. They tend to address more acute problems (well, more or less) and be more definitive. Of course, there are the long term complications that are possible...but that falls under the NMFP category.

Surgery is very cool. The medicin-ey aspects are minimized and you get to use your hands. If I wasn't so hell-bent on doing research and if I had decided to focus solely on clinical work, I would have looked more into surgery during my decision making process.
 
Leukocyte,

I am torn 'twixt GS and Path myself, much for the same reasons. Residency hours do not concern me, however. I feel all have long hours. The big question is what happens afterwards.

GS averages 58/wk vs Path 42/wk are the numbers I have seen online. Can these be trusted? If so, one could find a manual labor type of hobby to fill the hour difference per week and satify that craving. No one ought to sue me for making bad woodworking projects in my garage.
 
I do not recommend picking a residency based on some unknown (and probably wrong) survey's attempt to quantify # of hours/week. I see some attendings here well over 42 hours per week.
 
yaah said:
I do not recommend picking a residency based on some unknown (and probably wrong) survey's attempt to quantify # of hours/week. I see some attendings here well over 42 hours per week.
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That "42" number is an average though. You'll have people working less and people working more. Plus, who knows what the sample size was in that survey...a lot of these surveys have very small sample sizes. It depends on what kind of contract you can negotiate in the end which is probably somewhat random.
 
AndyMilonakis said:
That "42" number is an average though. You'll have people working less and people working more. Plus, who knows what the sample size was in that survey...a lot of these surveys have very small sample sizes. It depends on what kind of contract you can negotiate in the end which is probably somewhat random.
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I agree. I just think it's kind of a BS statistic and there is so much variation that seeing a number like this really has no bearing on what any individual experience is going to be.
 
Yes, it is a statistic. Sorry to have offended.

"Three types of lies: 1) Lies 2) Damn lies and 3) Statistics" Mark Twain

Generalizations about the life of an attendings are all I have to go on. The stats came from a medical school website r/e residency selection.
 
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Max, I wasn't offended...why would I be? I think I saw those numbers as well somewhere (was it a WashU website?) now that I think about it. Whether the numbers are accurate or not isn't the issue here really. What these two numbers do testify to is that pathology DOES have a nicer lifestyle. And some folks here are sensitive to pathology being called a "lifestyle" field. Who are we kidding though...pathology IS a better lifestyle field compared to some other fields such as surgery.

I noticed that you're from Sweden. Medicine in the U.S. has gotten worse. Physicians work more hours for less money. More medical school students are flocking towards "lifestyle" fields. I think that's awesome! Good for them, I say! I sure ain't gonna criticize people for that!
 
Exactly. That is all I was getting at. Sorry to be so snappy, I had my Psychiatry shelf today. Yuck.
 
Max_Berry said:
Exactly. That is all I was getting at. Sorry to be so snappy, I had my Psychiatry shelf today. Yuck.
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Dude, it's all good.

I get to snatch that diploma on stage today and mutter to the Dean, "Now gimme my MD, bitch! You want my stethoscope?"
 
I was not even remotely offended. I just think people need to give a little bit less credence to statistics like this which tend to assume way more importance in the eyes of many than they are worth. Thus, I bring it up so that people at least consider this fact.
 
AndyMilonakis said:
I get to snatch that diploma on stage today and mutter to the Dean, "Now gimme my MD, bitch! You want my stethoscope?"
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Congratulations!!! No more clinical medicine for you! :clap:
 
I recently spent an entire day shadowing a pathologist and I didn't realize they talked so much! :p

It WAS cool though ( I like to talk) and reaffrimed my interest in the field! :thumbup:
 
Max_Berry said:
Leukocyte,

I am torn 'twixt GS and Path myself, much for the same reasons. Residency hours do not concern me, however. I feel all have long hours. The big question is what happens afterwards.

GS averages 58/wk vs Path 42/wk are the numbers I have seen online. Can these be trusted? If so, one could find a manual labor type of hobby to fill the hour difference per week and satify that craving. No one ought to sue me for making bad woodworking projects in my garage.
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I was torn between path and GS as well. Would have loved either, I'm sure - in the end I think my personality is more in line with path, though.
 
yaah said:
:thumbup: You're official now!
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Yep. The MD diploma really means a lot to me especially because med school was a time of struggle, frustration, trials, and tribulations. And the MD diploma is pretty big too...it puts the PhD diploma and my Hopkins diploma to shame.

The Dean, during his address to the class at commencement, was talking about how due to tradition Michigan's diploma was still written in Latin and how it was the biggest MD diploma amongst the US medical schools (he could've been making this up) and how each of the signatures were individually signed and yada yada yada...just give me my damn diploma already! :laugh:
 
It is a pretty big ass diploma - some attendings have it in their office here and it takes up most of the wall. Mine is I guess average sized. But I have heard that size doesn't matter.
 
yaah said:
It is a pretty big ass diploma - some attendings have it in their office here and it takes up most of the wall. Mine is I guess average sized. But I have heard that size doesn't matter.
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:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
 
yaah said:
It is a pretty big ass diploma - some attendings have it in their office here and it takes up most of the wall. Mine is I guess average sized. But I have heard that size doesn't matter.
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An MD is an MD regardless of diploma size, you're right.

It's how you use your MD...it's up to you whether you will develop into a compassionate ______, a competent _______, or both!
 
It's not the size of the boat, it's the motion of the ocean....or something.

Congrats, DOCTOR Milonakis
 
yaah said:
It is a pretty big ass diploma - some attendings have it in their office here and it takes up most of the wall. Mine is I guess average sized. But I have heard that size doesn't matter.
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Mine is letter-sized. I only know because I sent it through the photocopier already, heh.

Andy said:
The Dean was talking about how due to tradition Michigan's diploma was still written in Latin and how it was the biggest MD diploma amongst the US medical schools (he could've been making this up) and how each of the signatures were individually signed and yada yada yada...
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Is it vellum? ;)
 
But it is English - just not American ;)

Main Entry: 1vel·lum
Pronunciation: 've-l&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English velim, from Middle French veelin, from veelin, adjective, of a calf, from veel calf -- more at VEAL
1 : a fine-grained unsplit lambskin, kidskin, or calfskin prepared especially for writing on or for binding books
2 : a strong cream-colored paper

03-0386.jpg


Now that would be very very traditional.
 
Then no, my diploma isn't on vellum. It's on thick paper derived from dead American trees!
 
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