"hot" path fellowships anyone?

[Sulfinator]

What's your opinion on "hot" path fellowships? That is to say, what fellowships are out there that 1) provide the fellow with good job marketability and 2) are likely to be fields that "lead" the future of pathology?

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[mlw03]

this is just from my med student perspective, but with the trend towards improving preventative and defensive healthcare, i would think derm, GI, and GU would be big as we get more aggressive with screening for skin, colorectcal, and prostate cancers respectively. i just did a month at our local VA and they got tons of each. seems like anyone with any complaint of GI bleeding got a scope and any rise in PSA bought a prostate biopsy (and i now know that a single prostate biopsy specimen takes a good while to review).

for the record, i think more screening tests are good for all involved - it's easier to treat an adenoma than an adenoCA, plus it's generally cheaper. good for pathologists (more screening colonoscopies), but also good for patient (less death from colorectal cancer).

 

[yaah]

It's kind of all relative though, 75% of GI biopsies and 75% of derms constitute the easiest specimens in all of pathology (most polyps and BCCs/SK/AK). You don't need a fellowship to do adequate with those. It's hard to predict what will be the most useful in the future. Right now GI, GU, and derm are more popular because they are in relative short supply. Heme is also popular because the volume and complexity keeps growing, and a lot of residency programs do a crappy job of training generalists to sign out heme.

What it usually comes down to is that almost any fellowship will be appropriate for most private practice jobs. At some point, different ones want different subspecialties and it always seems to be changing.

 

[LADoc00]

GI GU Derm

I expect cyto to decline. Heme will stay the same, flow reimbursement is already crap, cant go any lower.

I wouldnt be suprised if CP only salaries started dipping into the 70-80K range at places like Kaiser.

Basically, if you if have a poor understanding of business no fellowship will save you. Youre SOL.

 

[CameronFrye]

I wouldnt be suprised if CP only salaries started dipping into the 70-80K range at places like Kaiser.

Hey, that's not too bad for 10 hours a week.

 

[DarksideAllstar]

Hey, that's not too bad for 10 hours a week.

Sign me up.

 

[Anna Plastic]

Hey, that's not too bad for 10 hours a week.

You don't want to know how many hours a week I'm putting in now. It makes me sad to even think about my hourly rate!

All misrepresentations of our workhours aside, I find it hard to call any CP only practice (outside of heme) a "hot" fellowship. However, gotta say that I'm seeing a *lot* of job postings (and hearing of even more jobs offline) in transfusion medicine/blood banking, both academic and in blood centers. And these folks don't want someone who is CP trained only for these positions--they want BC/BE in TM/BB. The field is graying, and there are very few people training in it. If you don't mind the salary cut as compared to private practice, there is a lot of opportunity.