So how many hours do you guys/gals study pathology on weekdays/weekends? Just curious.
How Many Hours Spent Studying?
- Thread starter Unty
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On weekdays it varies. I would say 7:30-6 is a normal work day when not on surgpath. Now, not everyone of those hours is filled with "rotation duties" but I am still doing something work-related (projects, reading, preparing talks, etc). After that, life happens and it can vary. During PGY-1 and 2, I spent a good deal of time reading/studying at night after work- less so now to be honest. On weekends I would say that I usually take 1 complete day away from work related activities (unless I'm on call). The other day of the weekend I spend most of that day doing work related stuff, which is nice because there are no regular work day interruptions and I can get a lot of stuff done.
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I'm a third year med student who was speaking with a retired pathologist today (who's an inpatient) and he told me that in the past when he was a medical student the smartest students went into pathology and that somewhere around 10 per class would go into pathology. He says the state of pathology today is much different and I was wondering if I could get some input as to what's changed over this time period, and what the future holds for pathology. thanks.
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If you love and have a passion for pathology, do it. If you are in it for other reasons (lifestyle), then maybe another field would be a better choice.
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the field can't advance on passion alone. if we had the applicants that other competitive "cush/high-pay" fields (derm, rads, subspecialty surg etc), pathology would become much stronger. even if the people who choose these fields do so primarily for superficial reasons, they still gotta excel to get those positions.
smart people with assertive personalities get **** done. and that's what we need in path.
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Yeah, but smart people with assertive personalities who get **** done aren't choosing path these days. And path does a crap job of recruiting good residents in the first place. Most people I know of even in the medical fields either look down on path or have no idea what path really is. Most simply think we do autopsies. Many have little to no idea what we do with the rest of our time. People outside of medicine often think of us like Doug from Scrubs - the guy that couldn't hack it on the floors ends up in the Path dept. Part of me is absolutely fine with that - better to be underestimated and then surprise people. However, I'm sure it hurts the recruitment of good, smart med students into Pathology. Oh well. Better jobs for me I guess!
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They do where I trained and I have seen plenty of applicants over the years who could match into any specialty (top med schools, AOA, 240+ USMLE, publications, patents, etc). Interesting, that at my hospital pathologists command significant professional respect, perhaps the two are related. Our graduates are securing high paying jobs as well, which I assure you requires an assertive personality in this field.
I agree that if your program is filling with medical school cast-offs then it is a blight on our profession and should be closed.
