Academic pathology without subspecialty training

[PathRes1071]

I am a current surgical pathology fellow and have started jobhunting, with a focus on community-based practice. I am definitely not opposed to working in an academic setting so long as my central role emphasizes clinical and teaching responsibilities. I have been involved in multiple research projects and enjoy this sort of work; however, I would like to avoid a job that is publish or perish. I am not planning on additional fellowship, which I feel would put me at a disadvantage in academics.

I ran into one of my attendings from residency recently who graciously offered me an interview but unfortunately was not entirely specific as to what their institution was looking for in a candidate. Furthermore, an official job posting is not listed. I love teaching and am more or less equally interested in all pathology subdisciplines, assuming if I were to accept a position they will likely require I gain expertise in whichever area they need.

Long story short, the interview obviously requires a job talk, which is typically focused around the pathologist’s main area of research and future endeavors. My publications throughout residency cover GI, GYN, dermpath, neuropath, and transfusion medicine. I have never been the principal investigator and the majority of my studies were initiated by surgeons who needed a pathologist to interpret slides, immunohistochemistry, etc.

My plan is to present a job talk that conveys a general interest in surgical pathology. I’d like to continue research that is clinician directed and emphasize the relative ease to join such projects, accomplish multiple publications simultaneously with minimal effort and yet, perhaps, produce more clinically relevant results.

For those currently practicing or applying for academics, I would greatly appreciate any advice on how to approach this job talk.

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[Alteran]

I'm not an academician in my practice, but I've been around it long enough to know a few things about it. Your salary will be drawn from three things and not all of equal proportions: teaching, service, and research. Clinical track faculty are heavily slanted towards teaching and service (i.e. sign-out) which will make the bulk proportion of your salary whereas tenure track are more research and extramurally funded. If you're clinical track and another colleague of yours is tenure track at the same academic rank (i.e. assistant professor), you'll be making the same amount of money. The difference is a greater proportion of your colleague's salary will come from his/her extramural funding and with that comes some perks. Tenure track faculty who bring in the dough usually negotiate very very light call schedules (or no call at all) and less service time because the money that the department is losing out by not having them on service is being made up by their grant(s). They're also the ones who usually get promoted to associate and full professor without much hassle at all. I have rarely ever seen a clinical track assistant professor get promoted though that usually only happens with either a few high-impact papers under their belt as first authors or as PIs, or they have a busy local/regional consult service bringing in extra money to the department.

Your job in the interview will be to figure out what your clinical track responsibilities are and what are the conditions for promotion. If the conditions for promotion sound ridiculous (and only you would know that having been in that department) or super nebulous (i.e. no real intention of promoting you), it'll make for a good first job but probably not a permanent job. Hope this helps.