yaah said:
My advice: Don't do a fellowship because it makes you employable.
My advice: pragmatic considerations should be factored into any career decisions. If you like dermpath buy also like TM and also like cytology and also like transplant pathology etc..., then doing derm because it might make you more easily employable and give you more flexibility in what type of job you want and where it is located makes a lot of sense.
Now couldn't you theoretically do two years of core AP and one year of derm fellowship (as the third year)?
I have seen three others do that (2 years of AP, then one did one year of renal, another did one year of heme, and the third did one year of cyto). All three were hell-bent on doing academics, and I think the two in the boarded fellowships were board eligible.
So you could do two years AP, then one year derm, and you could get a great job doing nothing but dermpath, where you work completely as an outpatient pathologist (no call, no weekends, no frozens). This is a theoretical scenario, unless you are a whiz kid and go into a path program with a d-path fellowhip where the d-path program director is smitten with you, it would be very hard to pull off.
Lastly, everyone says that you need CP to work in private practice and I know that is true in general. But I have seen multiple people now go into private practice at community hospitals with AP only backgrounds. Some even take BB call, as most of the calls are basic and routine. One woman said that she takes the rare routine calls and if the rarer truly complex issue comes up, the BB knows to call the medical director (which she says hasn't happened in the 3 years she has been taking call).
