(Anyone can get us back on topic at any time. And for posterity, the quote is of Dr. Gaffey saying, "Pathologists should get out of the basement and buy themselves a fishtank.")
In a word, yes.
I can't speak for Dr. Gaffey, but in quoting him I meant it as a metaphorical comment on that sticky issue of the image of the pathologist.
The long and winding answer (don't say you weren't warned) is that I have a theory about pathologists, patient contact and compassion.
This week for instance a surgeon whacked out a golfball-sized hunk of tissue from a 30+ y/o with a history of VAIN III and sent it along for intraoperative consult. You know, just another specimen on just another day.
But I can tell you there was a palpable heart-sink in the frozen scope room the moment the slide came into focus - invasive SCC with multiple foci of perineural invasion. And it was "only a slide"!
But you shake it off and move on. Your role in that case has ended. There are other patients who need your expertise.
I want to say that for every callous pathologist, there is one who "cares too much". The nature of pathology practice provides the distance they need to function, in a job they find fascinating. Perhaps it's easier for a woman to say this - traditional gender roles has society less accepting of men saying "soft" things like this.
In a job where internists are known to go:
"What happened to Patient A, I see he's not on our list?"
"He died last night."
"Oh okay, one less to see then."
...people would stop thinking you were nuts and start thinking you were frankly weak, if you "cared too much". ("If you can't even handle being in pathology, then you really should get out of medicine completely!" etc.)
It isn't the most popular opinion and may be easily misinterpreted, but I would argue that it is the people who are able to
not care as much who go into clinical medicine, or they would otherwise become rapidly overwhelmed by the immensity of what they were doing (e.g. telling people they or their kid has cancer or a relapse, day after day after day).
You wouldnt grow a tough exterior if there wasnt something beneath it that needed protecting. And I agree with the poster who said in another thread that they were very very glad they were not out there - which again is not to say that pathologists have any less respect for the clinicians who do what they do every day, we simply like to have our role in patient care acknowledged. (Which is not to say that it isn't.)
But how do we change the image of pathologists to that of deeply compassionate "people-person"s? I don't think there is an easy answer. Hence the silliness about the fishtank
There! I'll be surprised if anyone reads all that.
