A Modest Proposal

[Parts Unknown]

Aight...

My informal and unscientific poll regarding attitudes towards job market threads shows about half of respondents are tired of them, but a sizable minority find them useful.

In the interest of cleaning the forum while retaining them as a potentially fruitful avenue of discussion (or dead horse beating, depending on your take), I move they be merged to please the majority, and stickied to please the minority.

Thoughts?

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[lipomas]

How would merging them help other than removing lots of threads? Each thread, even though it talks about the same thing, has conversations that don't necessarily match up with those in other threads. If you merge them, I would think that each merged post would then be arranged by when it was originally posted. That would mean you would have, potentially, one post from thread X followed by two from thread Y followed by another from thread X then three from thread Z and then four from thread Y, and it would go on like this. It would certainly clean things up but wouldn't help anyone who hadn't read any of them before.

 

[GoodmanBrown]

Aight...

My informal and unscientific poll regarding attitudes towards job market threads shows about half of respondents are tired of them, but a sizable minority find them useful.

In the interest of cleaning the forum while retaining them as a potentially fruitful avenue of discussion (or dead horse beating, depending on your take), I move they be merged to please the majority, and stickied to please the minority.

Thoughts?

Seems like a good idea. Also, you could make a Pathology sub-forum, like the Anesthesiology forum with their CRNA vs. MD debates. Cleans the main forum, but allows easy management. That way new threads can simply be moved instead of having to try to add them to existing threads.

 

[Parts Unknown]

How would merging them help other than removing lots of threads? Each thread, even though it talks about the same thing, has conversations that don't necessarily match up with those in other threads. If you merge them, I would think that each merged post would then be arranged by when it was originally posted. That would mean you would have, potentially, one post from thread X followed by two from thread Y followed by another from thread X then three from thread Z and then four from thread Y, and it would go on like this. It would certainly clean things up but wouldn't help anyone who hadn't read any of them before.

These threads don't read well as it is. If anything, a giant merge would illustrate how overwhelmingly repetitive these arguments are.

Also, you could make a Pathology sub-forum, like the Anesthesiology forum with their CRNA vs. MD debates. Cleans the main forum, but allows easy management. That way new threads can simply be moved instead of having to try to add them to existing threads.

An even better idea.

 

[pathstudent]

Aight...

My informal and unscientific poll regarding attitudes towards job market threads shows about half of respondents are tired of them, but a sizable minority find them useful.

In the interest of cleaning the forum while retaining them as a potentially fruitful avenue of discussion (or dead horse beating, depending on your take), I move they be merged to please the majority, and stickied to please the minority.

Thoughts?

Why do you read them if you find them repetitive?

I have a better idea. Why don't you stop reading them entirely instead of creating multiple threads about the threads.

 

[Parts Unknown]

Why do you read them if you find them repetitive?

For the occasional individuals who chime in with something new and worthwhile to say (i.e. not you). At best these thread are annoying, but at worst I find them counterproductive to their intended purpose.

I don't know about anyone else here, but I have received PMs from medical students who are interested in pathology but dismayed by continuous bleating over the supposedly horrible job market. If we lose some people to other fields that is one thing, but in the absence of decreasing residency training spots, and with continued academic demand for residents as meat movers, they will simply be replaced by less qualified candidates. The accelerated proliferation of less qualified individuals in the field, including those with poor communication skills and lower earning ambitions, will not help pathology.

 

[2121115]

I don't know about anyone else here, but I have received PMs from medical students who are interested in pathology but dismayed by continuous bleating over the supposedly horrible job market

All of the medical students interested in pathology from my institution asked me about this site this year when they were on rotation. That is right - all of them. All asked me about the job market in reference to this site. Some decided to go into pathology despite the job market. Others decided to go elsewhere.

 

[yaah]

I don't think a subforum is the answer. These things tend to go in cycles - lots of activity in the past month or two, but doesn't mean it will continue. Lipomas makes a good point about merging threads - not really a great option because it basically just discards threads (which might make some people happy but piss off a lot of others). I can start merging threads if people keep creating new threads on something that has been discussed recently though, will try to stay on top of it. If someone who is really passionate about the issue wants to create a link to all the "best" threads that talk about the job market, I can add it too the sticky.

In terms of discouraging applicants, I agree (and have tried to post as such) that many of these threads are incredibly counterproductive and the anger is being directed completely in the wrong directions. But it is next to impossible to convince people who will not listen to arguments, or who spin these arguments into something that they are not. I would hope that people who are serious about pathology would not make such serious decisions about their life based primarily on the rantings of selected anonymous individuals on the internet, but people make decisions for all kinds of reasons. It is always important to get perspective from many sources - especially from people that you trust. I can honestly say I do not know very many pathologists who regret their career choice, whereas I do know an awful lot of other clinicians who do. Those pathologists who do regret it tend to regret more the medical career decision than the specific specialty.

Many people who discard pathology as a career choice may not have been so serious about it in the first place, and it is good they get out before they get years into it and find out they made a mistake. I had a couple of residents in my program who came into pathology for the wrong reasons - it showed very early on in their work ethic and motivation. Neither one ended up finishing their training before transferring to a different specialty, and it had nothing to do with the job market.

 

[pathstudent]

I don't think a subforum is the answer. These things tend to go in cycles - lots of activity in the past month or two, but doesn't mean it will continue. Lipomas makes a good point about merging threads - not really a great option because it basically just discards threads (which might make some people happy but piss off a lot of others). I can start merging threads if people keep creating new threads on something that has been discussed recently though, will try to stay on top of it. If someone who is really passionate about the issue wants to create a link to all the "best" threads that talk about the job market, I can add it too the sticky.

In terms of discouraging applicants, I agree (and have tried to post as such) that many of these threads are incredibly counterproductive and the anger is being directed completely in the wrong directions. But it is next to impossible to convince people who will not listen to arguments, or who spin these arguments into something that they are not. I would hope that people who are serious about pathology would not make such serious decisions about their life based primarily on the rantings of selected anonymous individuals on the internet, but people make decisions for all kinds of reasons. It is always important to get perspective from many sources - especially from people that you trust. I can honestly say I do not know very many pathologists who regret their career choice, whereas I do know an awful lot of other clinicians who do. Those pathologists who do regret it tend to regret more the medical career decision than the specific specialty.

Many people who discard pathology as a career choice may not have been so serious about it in the first place, and it is good they get out before they get years into it and find out they made a mistake. I had a couple of residents in my program who came into pathology for the wrong reasons - it showed very early on in their work ethic and motivation. Neither one ended up finishing their training before transferring to a different specialty, and it had nothing to do with the job market.

Yeah no doubt yeah.... back in the late 90s/early 00s only 120-140 us medical students went into pathology per year which was on average less than 1 per med school. THere was no path forum back then, and that was more or less a golden era for pathology in terms of compensation. Now there is over 300-400 USmgs a year going going into pathology. So it seems that training programs are good as the trainees.

 

[Thrombus]

All of the medical students interested in pathology from my institution asked me about this site this year when they were on rotation. That is right - all of them. All asked me about the job market in reference to this site. Some decided to go into pathology despite the job market. Others decided to go elsewhere.

Thats good to hear -- we need people to be informed from all sides of the spectrum (not just the academic "ivory tower" perspective) when making the most important decision of their professional career.