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- Thread starter Starx
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I’m a pathologist. These specialties are nothing alike. It sounds like you really want psychiatry but are scared of not matching. I would go all in and apply to psychiatry broadly, including taking a gap year as necessary.
Pathology does not seem to have as promising a future. If you only liked pathology, I would say apply path but this field has too many headaches for those interested in simply matching.
Pathology does not seem to have as promising a future. If you only liked pathology, I would say apply path but this field has too many headaches for those interested in simply matching.
Thank you for the input!
For psychiatry, I tried the filter for US seniors and it shows a 66% match in 2020. Which is still... not great but maybe more hopeful?
Thank you for the advice!
I thought I was all for pathology up until recently (2 days ago) when I spiraled reading forums and started to really reflect on what I could see myself doing. I was not sure whether I could deal with patients as an introverted anxious person, so I kind of jumped the pathology train. With no path experience.
My path elective this year got cancelled unfortunately 🙁 maybe it is a sign
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Pick something you like. Forget about what the job market is like. If you hate your job even with plenty of high paying jobs, ain’t going to change the fact you hate it. Especially if you don’t care where you’d be.
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I love pathology, i think it is hands down the best specialty in medicine. Most people would not agree and the reason is that the day to day of a pathologist is radically different than pretty much any other doctor. If you’re going to be making a decision this important, you really need to make sure you understand what you’re getting yourself into before you are stuck behind a microscope for the rest of your career.
People joke that we’re all autistic and have easy hours. Know that pathology can be very stressful. You have to make some really hard and subjective calls with little information and you need to be able to communicate effectively. Your mistakes are also preserved forever in pink and purple, so go in knowing you are expected to bat 1000 at minimum. Also you need to be cool with grossing and autopsies because you will do a lot of that, at least during residency.
The skill set in Pathology is very different which makes changing your mind and moving to another field more difficult. This is compounded by the fact we do not do an intern year. If you are serious about pathology and can’t do a rotation, you should email as many pathologists as you can to see if they will let you shadow, even for a few hours here and there. Not to nag, but this is something medical students should be setting time aside to do from day 1. Your medical school doesn’t care if you had enough exposure, their priority is taking your money and pushing you through the pipeline.
I agree with IMGASMD, the job market shouldn’t deter you but you should accept it as a limitation in all smaller specialties, not just pathology.
Good luck to you and feel free to reach out to me if you have questions.
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Absolutely means better odds, but with a 66%, you’ll need a backup. But it is 0% if you dont apply to psych at all
Psychiatry PGY-4 here. One thing I would say is that introverted and anxious is not at all an uncommon personality profile in psychiatry.
However, the above concerns me a bit. If you’re just looking for a specialty where you won’t be worried about getting things wrong, that’s not a good sign for any specialty. I would think a good pathologist would have a good level of healthy anxiety about the prospect of getting a diagnosis wrong. Similarly, in psychiatry, you’re often going to be put in the situation where you must opine on whether a person can leave the hospital when they are making suicidal and threatening remarks. For a variety of reasons, these people may need to be discharged despite them saying these things but you should have a metered level of anxiety every time you make this recommendation. That anxiety is what is going to keep you from cavalierly making a bad decision.
In terms of matching, you definitely need to have a backup specialty if you are applying to psych with a step 1 of <200. You will also need to apply very broadly. It is very possible that you will still get a spot in psych but it will be an uphill battle.
You should definitely do a psych sub-I to figure out whether you actually enjoy this field or if you just think you like it because you find it easier than other disciplines. A lot of people find their psych rotation to be easy. This isn’t really because psychiatry is easy but rather that psych residents and attendings are generally pretty friendly and place more value on students’ time. A lot of people in psych have no interest in keeping a med student tagging along all day when it’s not educational. They also tend to avoid waking their patients up at ungodly hours to round. As a result, many students have an experience where their hours are light and they get mostly positive comments from their friendly, conflict-averse supervisors. This is different from actually enjoying psychiatry.
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