Only doing a molecular fellowship?

[footbasket]

I am doing and AP/CP path residency. I like molecular. Are there options for jobs after doing just a molecular fellowship (such as industry or whatever) . Most people seem to combine molecular with something other fellowship such as heme, micro, surg path, ect. Is it possible to just do a molecular fellowship and then be able to get a job?

Thanks

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[Thrombus]

Certainly. I will offer you 75K per year plus bene's; 3 weeks PTO, and yearly raises 1 point plus inflation for a 5 year contract as long as you do not complain, work hard, and are board certified, competent and intelligent. That is about all I am able to offer in this market.

PM me for details.

 

[gbwillner]

I am doing and AP/CP path residency. I like molecular. Are there options for jobs after doing just a molecular fellowship (such as industry or whatever) . Most people seem to combine molecular with something other fellowship such as heme, micro, surg path, ect. Is it possible to just do a molecular fellowship and then be able to get a job?

Thanks

Yes, there are. But this field is currently developing and you need to think about exactly what you want to do with your time. Molecular labs are opening up all over the place and looking for directors. Right now the market is good. However, this will likely plateau in the near future and you may miss the boat. Also, people with CP or PhDs will be your competition.
If you have strong AP skills, doing a single molecular fellowship will allow you to either run a lab exclusively or do surgpath and run a fledgling molecular lab on the side. This is probably where most will end up- similar to the popular hemepath/molecular combo.

 

[KCShaw]

Jobs are out there, but it's niche, even if you also do some surg path or whatever with it. But it's also one of those boiling niches, and I think it remains to be seen just how big it will become or whether it will shrink back, from a job-market point of view. But people can and do get directorship jobs right out of fellowship. There's just not that much of a market for underlings, I don't think, and jobs are likely widely scattered.

 

[LADoc00]

MolPath fellowship may literally have been the worst idea EVER from the ABP.

Young people think its a career when in fact its a giant bear trap. Sad Panda.

 

[2121115]

My practice has been looking for someone who specializes in molecular. Particularly, we would like someone with a special interest in PCR and southern blot. With the increasing volume of molecular tests being ordered, a fellowship trained board certified molecular pathologist would be a tremendous asset. We are constantly getting tough PCR cases and it would be great to have a molecular trained person on board for those tough cases. Partnership track. PM me if interested.


... said no one ever.

 

[LADoc00]

damn R2D2..1115..blah blah..

that is just cruel!

Yes MolPath Fellowship is about as valuable as a PhD in Women Studies...

 

[Substance]

damn R2D2..1115..blah blah..

that is just cruel!

Yes MolPath Fellowship is about as valuable as a PhD in Women Studies...

From a pragmatic perspective, doing a fellowship in a subdiscipline that is essentially automated and operates on Boolean logic is a foolish decision.

What makes doctors valuable is that their brains are required to perform the work, and that there are no shortcuts to this step. Molecular pathology does not require brains. It requires a technician to calibrate the tests. PhDs can, and already do, perform this task for 10% of the cost of a physician.

It's like if radiology had a physics fellowship, but it doesn't, because that's a stupid idea (The ACR has a bunch of other stupid ideas, with the exam crap and the overtraining problem, but that's another topic for another time).

Pathology has gotta get out of the "lab" before it can be seen as real medicine. That means getting involved with clinical work and interventional path. For that you guys need to do an internship year before anyone will take you seriously.

 

[gbwillner]

my practice has been looking for someone who specializes in molecular. Particularly, we would like someone with a special interest in pcr and southern blot NEXT GEN SEQUENCING AND TUMOR MULTI-GENE PANEL TESTING. With the increasing volume of molecular tests GENOMIC ANALYSES being ordered, a fellowship trained board certified molecular pathologist would be a tremendous asset TO HELP US UNDERSTAND HOW TO INTERPRET THE TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF DATA, THAT IS INCREASINGLY BEING SHOWN TO BE RELEVANT TO PATIENT TREATMENT . We are constantly getting tough pcr cases LUNG TUMOR SAMPLES WITH REQUESTED EXOME CAPTURE and it would be great to have a molecular trained person on board for HELPING US ANALYZE AND UNDERSTAND THE TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF DATA GENERATED BY those tough cases. Partnership track. Pm me if interested.


... Said no one ever.

ftfy

 

[LADoc00]

From a pragmatic perspective, doing a fellowship in a subdiscipline that is essentially automated and operates on Boolean logic is a foolish decision.

What makes doctors valuable is that their brains are required to perform the work, and that there are no shortcuts to this step. Molecular pathology does not require brains. It requires a technician to calibrate the tests. PhDs can, and already do, perform this task for 10% of the cost of a physician.

It's like if radiology had a physics fellowship, but it doesn't, because that's a stupid idea (The ACR has a bunch of other stupid ideas, with the exam crap and the overtraining problem, but that's another topic for another time).

Pathology has gotta get out of the "lab" before it can be seen as real medicine. That means getting involved with clinical work and interventional path. For that you guys need to do an internship year before anyone will take you seriously.

Okay yes good idea. We also need to get together and develop a T-virus weapon. Then hold the world hostage until every Pathologist is issued 10 million dollars and supermodel girlfriend from a small Russian village who is placed nude in the driver side of a new Porsche 911 Turbo with 10 million in cash in the trunk.
At that point, we deactivate the T-virus drone army and drive off to our new homes on the coast in Malibu...

 

[Substance]

ftfy

This sounds like something a computer programmer would be more useful for than some pathologist. Heck, pathology is notorious for its reluctance to embrace technology.

 

[Substance]

Okay yes good idea. We also need to get together and develop a T-virus weapon. Then hold the world hostage until every Pathologist is issued 10 million dollars and supermodel girlfriend from a small Russian village who is placed nude in the driver side of a new Porsche 911 Turbo with 10 million in cash in the trunk.
At that point, we deactivate the T-virus drone army and drive off to our new homes on the coast in Malibu...

You're wrong dude. You've seen how ridiculous the T-Virus is. You need to manufacture your own Las Plagas.

But back on track, why not embrace more clinical work?

 

[gbwillner]

You're wrong dude. You've seen how ridiculous the T-Virus is. You need to manufacture your own Las Plagas.

But back on track, why not embrace more clinical work?

I don't usually respond to your posts since you are usually just trolling here, but I think this is a valid question.

I think the bottom line is the reason. CP can and DOES see patients at academic centers, specifically in the form of transfusion medicine and pheresis. Running these procedures does generate revenue, but it is easier to hire and train technicians to run the equipment, and just oversee the process. In general, however, CP makes less than AP (with rare exceptions), because our time is less valuable than our ability to read slides. We simply generate more revenue by sitting in our offices reading slides than we would by going to the clinic and doing a physical exam or interacting with patients.

Now, if we did specific procedures (more like what IR does) then it could be a different story. In fact, this IS happening. FNA clinics are popping up around the country, where people walk in, and a pathologist performs the FNA and looks at the slides right there. It is yet to be seen if this will catch on and be a mainstay of pathology practice in the future. Right now it is mainly limited to cytopathology.

 

[KluverB]

....Pathology has gotta get out of the "lab" before it can be seen as real medicine. That means getting involved with clinical work and interventional path. For that you guys need to do an internship year before anyone will take you seriously.

Although I agree that MolPath fellowships will go the way of the dodo the way IHC fellowships went, FTW is "interventional path" and what sort of "clinical work" should pathologists be doing? Is this where we perform autopsies on almost dead patients? (I have essentially been asked something like that on more than one occasion by my "clinical" colleagues.) Or is it the part where we compete with GIs and CTs for in vivo endoscopy perks? Or perhaps I should tag along with the medicine team as they walk from bed to bed and discuss strategies for discharging or turfing their frequent fliers, and waxing poetic about the merits of using Vasotec vs Altace, senokot vs bisacodyl, Mizuno vs Dunlop?

How is an internship year going to help me as a pathologist? It's all the same carp you see in med school, the hours are just a bit worse. Very little of that has had any impact on my day-to-day work as a pathologist. I can't think of the last time I had to worry about whether I'm going to overdiurese or fluid overload a demented delirious octogenarian diabetic with CHF and A-fib and a GFR of 20, when I'm in fact doing both at the same time and it's really just plain dumb luck that they make it through to the next shift, and how that might impact on the quality of my path reports. Or whether the peds amox dose for AOT is 40 or 80 mg/kg/d, and is that q6h or q8h.

I would actually argue the opposite. Given that the amount of pathology and lab med taught in med school is getting less and less these days, and that most "clinicians" have never ever set foot in the lab, they are the ones who need to spend more time in the lab so they don't keep ordering stupid tests or take sttihy biopsies that I then get to call "insufficient for diagnosis" and their patients get to come back for more invasive procedures. Or, how about a smidgeon about basic blood banking and coag? Or how about anything about sensitivity, specificity, CV, etc.!

I already do "interventional path", in that I intervene when I render my tissue diagnosis when the clinical suspicion is nowhere in the ballpark or when stupid siht tests get ordered and then usually misinterpreted.

 

[KCShaw]

I used to think the mol-path fellowships would go the way of the IHC fellowships too, but over the last 10 years they seem to be gaining traction, not fading away. Perhaps the critical mass just hasn't been reached, as every wanna-be is whipping up new and more complex mol-gen tests and claiming they're worth a spit. And some may be. But while many folks are eager to either blindly embrace them or blindly discount them, only a few are gaining the expertise and spending the time to sort through.

Internship I think is helpful, but more to assist in understanding what clinicians are actually going through, being better able to understand their issues, and being better able to communicate effectively with them. It's not going to change the course of an entire specialty though. Still, I think med school is a laughable comparison to it. I would be more ready to suggest dropping the first year or so of medical school and replacing it with a universal paid intern year at the end, with all the responsibilities and aggravations. But I agree that med schools generally fail to teach pathology, and that's perhaps a more realistic place to drive some change.

 

[bosco77]

totally agree.
we spend 2 years in clinical medicine.
clinician know jack crap about path, maybe 2 months of their intern year should be rotating thru pathology.
god what a nightmare to do an intern year for no reason, horrible idea.

 

[jp123ok]

totally agree. we spend 2 years in clinical medicine. Clinician know jack crap about path, maybe 2 months of their intern year should be rotating thru pathology. god what a nightmare to do an intern year for no reason, horrible idea.

Yeah, one of the great things about path is that we are spared the misery of an intern year.

 

[KluverB]

Until reimbursement issues stabilize (one way or the other), I'd be quite wary of MolPath outside of a research-backed setting.

See latest Dark Daily:
http://www.darkdaily.com/failure-to-pay-for-new-molecular-cpt-codes-creates-money-crisis-for-
clinical-laboratories-and-pathology-groups