Are all pathology professors cool or what?

[Red Beard]

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We have four path lecturers at our school, and every one of them is funny and laid back. They are by far the most loved personalities among all our lecturing faculty.

Is this an anomaly, or is this just what the culture is like in pathology?

 

[Gut Shot]

is this just what the culture is like in pathology?

Yes, yes it is.

 

[Hayden2102]

Oh GOD no.

 

[kronickm]

There seems to be a correlation between happy docs and ones who don't usually work directly with patients. Go figure.

 

[Pembleton]

Most of the Path professors I've met are fairly cool.

 

[yaah]

There seems to be a correlation between happy docs and ones who don't usually work directly with patients. Go figure.

A lot of pathologists are also doing what they love to do, so that helps.

There are all kinds of people in pathology. There are also major a-holes just like in every other field. Of course, it's also important to remember that what someone is like as a teacher in med school doesn't always reflect what they are like as an attending -I have met a few pathologists who are loved by med students but disliked by residents or attendings in other fields.

 

[TRAMD]

All of my path professors were very laid back and cool. Pathology is definitely an underappreciated field by too many medical grads. Good salaries, great hours, low stress and even very good programs are only average competitiveness-wise. Why didn't I go into path again?

 

[Blade28]

Very laid-back - I agree.

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

Pathologists tend to be pretty cool dudes and ladies, especially the ones who work with medical students. I think its a combination of the fact that they, more than anyone probably, understand the basis of disease and want to work with you to explain it.

 

[njbmd]

We have four path lecturers at our school, and every one of them is funny and laid back. They are by far the most loved personalities among all our lecturing faculty.

Is this an anomaly, or is this just what the culture is like in pathology?

The spend most of the day in cold, damp places sniffing formaldehyde soaked tissues that are embedded in paraffin and peering through a microscope. After a few years, the formaldehyde changes in brain tissue are permanent and personality is affected.

Most but not all of the pathologists that I know love what they do and are generally pretty easy going. Pathology is a license to "mind the business of every other physician in the hospital". Few emergencies, little call, (one does have to get post-mortem exams done in a timely fashion) and generally a nice lifestyle in a specialty that is in no danger of mid-level practitioner encroachment.

 

[Ashers]

Is this an anomaly...?

At my school it's an anomaly.

Some of my friends and I had a theory that the path lecturers were the worst of the bunch that went basically like this:

-PhDs may stay in their lab, but they have to present stuff, so they have to be able to know how to teach.
-MDs generally know how to talk to people because they see a lot of patients.
-Pathologists, even though they're MDs, stay in a room and work with tissue and don't talk to many people, so they don't know how to teach or talk to people.

We had very few good path lectures. The ones that were good were the clinical correlates or the ones by PhDs, and occasionally, there was a pathologist who gave a good lecture.

However, as a disclaimer, in our forensic pathology lectures, we were told that the forensic pathologists had to go to a crime scene and be able to take a good "history" of what happened from bystanders, family, whatever. So we (my friends and I) concluded that forensic pathologists were pathologists who could talk to people, but their lectures weren't any better than any of the other pathologists.

We basically came up with these theories during path and right after class when our frustration was the highest. The class was also one of the worst organized in history.

Edit: I don't hate pathologists. I worked in a lab before med school, and the pathologists there were all really nice. But the trend at my school for lecturing pathologists didn't follow the trend I knew from before.

 

[Re3iRtH]

I just started medical school, and I'm actually seriously considering
path as a career. My only worry is that pathologists get the stigma
that they are "anti-social", and I don't want people to judge me before
they meet me.
I have actually been interested in forensics since i was 7. And medicine
only 2 years ago. The few pathologists I've met seemed to be satisfied
as hell, dunno with what, but they were.

 

[Ambs]

Our path lectures were awesome. I can only recall a couple of the lectures being painful due in part to the lecturer (neuropath..). I really felt that our path professors were super intelligent and most had great personalities and threw in jokes here and there.

 

[medhacker]

I just started medical school, and I'm actually seriously considering
path as a career. My only worry is that pathologists get the stigma
that they are "anti-social", and I don't want people to judge me before
they meet me.
I have actually been interested in forensics since i was 7. And medicine
only 2 years ago. The few pathologists I've met seemed to be satisfied
as hell, dunno with what, but they were.

If you will be doing what you love, who cares what they think...
Go for what you love!

 

[RxnMan]

Our path guys are pretty cool. We get a primer path course before going into systemic path, and the lectures were actually fun.

Red is Dead!

 

[DoctaJay]

Our path lecturers aren't at all cool, but they are pretty quirky, like alot of PhD folks I know.