Looking to get experience in forensic Pathology

[shmc52]

Hi all,

I am taking a year off after medical school and wanted to find out opportunities to get involved in Forensic pathology or Medical Examiners office in this year. If there is some kind of observership or even pain internship that would be even better!

Can any of you can please guide me how I can pursue this to gain more exposure to the field?

thanks!!

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[mlw03]

Call your local ME or coroner's office. Say you want to volunteer. That's the way to start.

Not sure what the heck you mean by "pain internship". If you meant "paid" internship, that's not going to happen. If you want to be a forensic pathologist, you need to do your path residency and then a fellowship. There's no other way to get paid doing FP in North America.

 

[Dawn1980]

I can assure the OP that he/she is likely to not be paid for whatever forensic "internship" obtained. Budgets are tight nationwide.

 

[TMZ2007]

We have paid undergrad interns in our office; some are criminal justice, some are bio/pre-med. Pay is not great; $9-10/hr. The better ones eviscerate/dissect/dictate grosses, but the majority of them do scutwork (clean up, release bodies, take notes during posts, etc.) The likelihood of getting a reasonable full-time position and salary with no relevant experience is small, however.

 

[mlw03]

We have paid undergrad interns in our office; some are criminal justice, some are bio/pre-med. Pay is not great; $9-10/hr. The better ones eviscerate/dissect/dictate grosses, but the majority of them do scutwork (clean up, release bodies, take notes during posts, etc.) The likelihood of getting a reasonable full-time position and salary with no relevant experience is small, however.

What you're describing to me is a morgue tech. If the OP wants to work as such he could, but it's not going to help him/her get a path residency. Might help get an FP fellowship down the road. I emphasize might.

 

[KeratinPearls]

Hi all,

I am taking a year off after medical school and wanted to find out opportunities to get involved in Forensic pathology or Medical Examiners office in this year. If there is some kind of observership or even pain internship that would be even better!

Can any of you can please guide me how I can pursue this to gain more exposure to the field?

thanks!!

You should not take a year off unless you absolutely have to. I think if you get any path related job it will be low paying. You never want to have a gap in your CV unless there is a good reason for it.

 

[KCShaw]

Or you can stop with a GED and go try to get elected as a coroner somewhere. I believe there are a few people practicing as autopsy 'pathologists' without typical training or board certifications, but they appear to be few and far between. A little more common seems to be those who did general pathology training but never passed boards, then those who did a forensic fellowship but never passed boards, and so on up the line. But realistically one can't "expect" to find a job as a forensic pathologist without at least doing AP/FP training.

As far as looking to the future but with some time to burn, sure, you can try to volunteer somewhere, or even work as a tech or whatever, but you have to realize that FP is normally at the end of a long line -- branching into FP is relatively non-competitive right now as compared to what it takes to get started, like landing a decent residency position and doing well enough in that for 3-4 years. Having significant experience at an ME office -might- help one land a "good" FP fellowship, but historically there have invariably been unfilled fellow positions every year. Point being, it may be more beneficial to you to, say, observe at a surgical pathology office or do some kind of medically related research somewhere instead, keeping in mind you would have to start applying for residency again in the next few months. If somehow you already have a residency lined up, then that changes everything.