stupid question:path&personality

i'm guessing that alot of paths were the quiet guys in highschool.. never really wanting to talk to anyone... and having thoughts of death all the time

haha.. jk.. might be true?

I have to disagree. Virtually all ER docs are outgoing, but they're often not athletic.

don't worry if you fit the "profile." do a path rotation and see if you like it.

I guess the short, balding, roly-poly ER docs at my hospital went into the wrong field, then.

Seriously though, you're not completely off-base with the idea that different specialties attract different personalities. You will have a better sense for that at the end of your clinical year, I think. If it helps, my best fits besides path were emergency medicine and surgery. Go figure. I think I liked both path and EM because of the feeling of "knowing everything" in medicine, as well as a fairly fast pace of case turnover and not having ongoing patient care committments. I think I liked both path and surgery because I enjoy making a firm decision and taking action, rather than sitting around talking and philosophizing over the pros and cons of this medicine versus that medicine, and in the end you aren't going to cure anybody anyway.

I would venture to say that path does have some general personality characteristics...but not the ones you mentioned. I've noticed path people are very curious, intellectually active and ask "Why?" constantly. If you are the kind of person who just really loves learning for the sake of learning, and you love learning about cool stuff just because you think it's interesting and cool, then you might be a good fit in path. Others might not care to know "why," they just want to fix it and move on. (For example, I heard a story about a resident who paged an ortho attending to let him know that their patient was vomiting. The attending bellowed, "Does it have BONES in it? NO?" and hung up. ) Path people also tend to be calm and laid back and unselfconscious. Part of this might come from working "behind the scenes," where we can let our hair down and have unabashed fun in a way that patient care people can't, but it also has to do with the type of people who choose to forego the spotlight because they just don't care all that much about public recognition. Even other physicians have a limited understanding of what pathologists do, so the prestige is minimal...you have to be OK with that.

We have old threads on this...I will try to find them later when I look...

Who's Mr. Tickle, just to profess my ignorance

Pingu said:

Who's Mr. Tickle, just to profess my ignorance

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He is one of many characters created in a series of "Mr" and "Little Miss" books in the 80s (maybe 70s?). They were all short books about these characters with prominent characteristics or behaviors. You can google search for "Roger Hargreaves" as he was the author.

yaah said:

He is one of many characters created in a series of "Mr" and "Little Miss" books in the 80s (maybe 70s?). They were all short books about these characters with prominent characteristics or behaviors. You can google search for "Roger Hargreaves" as he was the author.

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OMG I think I remember those books.

She doesn't have to. The books come on tape as well.

Arby's used to give out Mr. and Little Miss figurines in their kid's meals.

I had a lot of ciriticism about liking pathology in my 2nd year of med school. My friends would say, "they aren't real doctors," & I was so anti-pathology that I didn't even consider it again until I was miserable in my 3rd year clinical rotations. That's what it took for me to realize that I was going to do what I liked. I am very outgoing and love being around my friends & family. No one could understand why such a "personable, likable, & outgoing" person wanted to go into the dreaded field of PATHOLOGY. Well, like previous posters stated I want to know more, I want to understand why things happen, and I love to learn. I knew I would somewhat miss being around patients, but not enough to NOT do what I loved. The reason I am doing path is because it is fun, interesting, and IS a field of medicine. I am not doing anything different than my friends going into Peds, OBGYN, Medicine, or Surgery. I just picked my field and they picked theirs.

I say if you like it go with it, otherwise you will be miserable. Don't let what others say make your decision. I am so glad I didn't.

cure4cancer said:

i'm guessing that alot of paths were the quiet guys in highschool.. never really wanting to talk to anyone... and having thoughts of death all the time

haha.. jk.. might be true?

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Pretty much describes me, except for the guy part.

TigerPath05 said:

I had a lot of ciriticism about liking pathology in my 2nd year of med school. My friends would say, "they aren't real doctors," & I was so anti-pathology that I didn't even consider it again until I was miserable in my 3rd year clinical rotations. That's what it took for me to realize that I was going to do what I liked. I am very outgoing and love being around my friends & family. No one could understand why such a "personable, likable, & outgoing" person wanted to go into the dreaded field of PATHOLOGY. Well, like previous posters stated I want to know more, I want to understand why things happen, and I love to learn. I knew I would somewhat miss being around patients, but not enough to NOT do what I loved. The reason I am doing path is because it is fun, interesting, and IS a field of medicine. I am not doing anything different than my friends going into Peds, OBGYN, Medicine, or Surgery. I just picked my field and they picked theirs.

I say if you like it go with it, otherwise you will be miserable. Don't let what others say make your decision. I am so glad I didn't.

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I always was interested in path but never thought it was as interesting a career as it turns out to be. I went to med school wanting to go into IM but after clinical rotations there was no way. I like people but sick people are not always that pleasant. Sure, every now and then you meet a nice one, but the hassle is much more apparent.

If you haven't seen the other threads - there are a lot of comments from people who were told by folks in other fields "don't go into path, it would be a waste, you're too good with people" etc etc. I was told that on several occasions and while it was nice to hear it really doesn't mean much.

Mr Tickle and Little Miss Naughty? LOL

If I remember those books, they would have maybe half a sentence a page. And I remember a green character as well, must have struck my fancy back then. I'm gonna try googling it and try finding out.

I geuss what they say about pathologists is true to some extent i.e. being shy, reticent, non-people type persons. I didn't mind dealing with patients on my clinical services, but I can't deal with the scut work associated with clinical medicine. And of course there are alot of pathologists who don't fit into that mold but I found that alot of them had former lives in other specialties.

I always heard people say they picked path because they hated their clinical rotations. I guess I am a freak then, because I actually loved all my clinical rotations (Okay, GYN pushed it)...I just loved path more. And you have to know a lot about every specialty in order to be good at path.

And I do think we still have to be very good with people because we are consultants to other physicians and must be able to communicate and function socially at a high level. Pathologists in private practice have to be good leaders and be able to manage different types of people with very different backgrounds.

Mrbojangles said:

I geuss what they say about pathologists is true to some extent i.e. being shy, reticent, non-people type persons. I didn't mind dealing with patients on my clinical services, but I can't deal with the scut work associated with clinical medicine. And of course there are alot of pathologists who don't fit into that mold but I found that alot of them had former lives in other specialties.

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This is true to some extent in every field of medicine. There are shy, reticent, non-people type surgeons, psychiatrists, even pediatricians. Just as there are sociable pathologists. People like and choose careers for different reasons, and one's life and personality is not defined by their job.

Agreed about the scutwork. Bad stuff. Clinical medicine also just feels like you are spinning your wheels too much and not getting anywhere.

On clinical rotations, I loved talking to the patients, but found that I didn't like being, surprisingly, in the role of the doctor. There was something about the feeling of formality and power in the interpersonal interactions with patients that I disliked. More importantly, I found that I detest the physical exam. Every single little part of it. I think I'm fairly introverted, but was still surprised at the extent that these things bothered me.

I already liked pathology before the clinical years started, but was sold on it after I realized that the doctor-patient business, while fun at times, was so much less fun and more stressful for me for than the intellectual problem-solving stuff.

cytoborg said:

And you have to know a lot about every specialty in order to be good at path.

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That's really true. I like that aspect of pathology. It touches on every field of medicine. For instance I hated the ob/gyn clerkship but I like the oncology/pathology aspect of it and it's kind of neat having that exposure.

I finally found Mr Messy. I definitely remember Mr Messy!

TigerPath05 said:

I had a lot of ciriticism about liking pathology in my 2nd year of med school. My friends would say, "they aren't real doctors,"...No one could understand why such a "personable, likable, & outgoing" person wanted to go into the dreaded field of PATHOLOGY.

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That is very ridiculous, I'm glad you didn't listen! I'm not sure what criteria make a "real" doctor; we have the same two letters after our names as they do. Of course, if being a "real" doctor involves q4 call and seeing endless numbers of patients, I guess I'm okay with not being a "real" doctor .

Gosh. I never read any of those books. I had the Mr. Men Annual!



I'm not even going to pretend I read the non-Mr. Men part of this thread...

AndyMilonakis said:

People who give you crap about being a pathologist suck. Fortunately, I didn't face much resistance or criticism from faculty ever since I was interested in pathology. I only got crap from a few classmates way back a long time ago during M2 year..."ooh, you're not gonna be a real doctor; ooh, you see dead people; ooh, you're such a slacker; ooh, you hate people; ooh, you're such a frickin' idiot; ooh, you like to sit on your thumb all day and twirl around and around; ooh, why did you even go into medicine...yada yada yada". Interestingly, some of those very people are very miserable in their respective fields doing "sterile" vag exams at 4 am, working up their um-teenth geriatrics patient with multiple medical problems, going into the ICU thinking, "I wanna kill myself everyday" or assisting some jackoff attending during a Whipple procedure when he would rather stay at home and play Halo 2 all day.

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In case you all think path is not busy - my day yesterday:

8am conference
9am to VA
9:30-10:30 multiple frozen sections on an oral cavity cancer case
10:30-11 sign out a couple of cases
11-1 multiple (27!!!) Frozens on an eyelid basal cell cancer
1-5 signout cases
5-8 gross in day's cases.
8-8:30 code new diagnoses into computer.

I did get lunch though.

AndyMilonakis said:

was today any lighter? wait that's a dumb question...it's only 6:30 and you're already back on SDN....yep today was better.

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8-9 lecture
9 go to VA, sit on ass and read Rosai for awhile.
11-1 signout
1-1:15 lunch
1:15-4 signout cases (most of time spent on 3 long cases. We did the last 15 cases in about 15 minutes).
4-5:30 gross
5:30 - 6 code in new diagnoses.

good day. No frozens today.