Having done a neurology rotation, there is no way that a path residency followed by n-path fellowship would ever train you to practice clinical neurology, nor would any academic, private practice or public hospital neurology group hire you to do so.
I have looked into it and the only patient contact any pathologist has is doing an occassional bone marrow aspirate, but now Heme/Onc is taking over a greater and greater proportion of those. I have been told that older docs (>50) will call their path firends to do the aspiration as that is what happened when they were trained as residents, but now for docs of the younger generation are all conditioned to call Heme/Onc.
Since almost all the specimens for neuropath we get come from neurosurgery not neurology I don't see what the usefullness would be. Maybe if you were in a place that gets alot of muscle or nerve biopsies.
But, if that is what you want to do it is possible. Some programs may require you do one year of anatomic pathology prior to entry.
Pathologists get patient contact doing Bone marrows, fine needle aspirates and blood bank (apheresis and consults of transfusion reactions). Granted not like a primary care specialty, but more than I care for hehe. It also can be different from practice to practice, the FNA service and hemepath service here sees patients all day long.
