I have been a long time lurker on this site, but this particular thread has inspired me to register and join in on a conversation. I do find the topics and discussion here quite interesting.
I don't want to identify myself but to give a little background to the original person who posted this - I was trained at one of the elite pathology residency programs and stayed on as faculty there and gave my heart and soul for almost 7 yrs. I came out of training (AP/Cyto) ready to go because I was very busy and worked hard while a resident and fellow. I also trained before the ACGME resident hours rules so it wasn't unusual for me and my co-residents to sleep at the hospital while on SP and to spend all day on weekend days working and reviewing slides. When I transitioned to attending it was all well and good, I signed out a lot and continued to grow as a pathologist. After a while though the relatively low pay was enough for me to start looking around and I took a job at a corporate lab that draws only from outpatient setting and surgery centers. Let me first say I have never regretted this and the increase in salary has been life changing. My base pay increased > 100K when I transitioned has steadily increased and is currently in the mid 300s, + incentive bumps, + company match, + funding for CME & educational expenses, 6 weeks for vaca and other benefits with monetary value. I know I could have possibly made more if I had found a partnership track in a pathologist owned practice but the trade off to me is worth not having to deal with the headaches that come with a hospital based practice (call, frozens, etc). I am sure someone will point out that I am getting screwed over because I am billing a lot, but I was getting screwed 10x worse in academics if you look at my billing vs my pittance academic salary.
As far as skills withering, that depends on where you go and your current experience and skill level. Our lab sees GI biopsies, GYN biopsies, H&N biopsies, GYN cytology, Non-Gyn cytologies including thyroid FNA and GU biopsies including extended core prostates. I actually see more variety now b/c my academic job was partially sub-specialized. Every year I diagnose hundreds of cancers, both typical and unusual variants, in the GYN, GI and GU tract, unusual infections and other odd ball cases on a regular basis to stay sharp. Trust me if you can spot sneaky signet ring cancers in a GI biopsy you'll be fine staging said cancer if you ever crossed back to hospital based work. In my geographic area I have a lot of friends that I know from training and from practice and If I ever needed to I could easy go back to a hospital based position without any diagnostic issues. Knowing that I could easily cross back over if I ever regretted my choice to leave helped me to make the decision to leave. But I can tell you several years into I am all set unless something catastrophic happened and my lab shuttered or there were a major change in my work environment. Either of these is extremely unlikely but I suppose one never knows.
Not sure why most here are so quick to trash corporate labs, they arent all bad and there are a lot of perks.
- finally posting something.
