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Older pathologists who continue to work are not the problem with the pathology job market. Lets not chase that rabbit trail.
Partnership positions declining?
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frankly, one thing that scares me is that a large number of my former pp partners retired very shortly after our windfall from selling in 1996. they were pretty young to retire and they got the big one-two punch from the dot com bust and 2007-2009 bust. they thought they had more money than they did. some have gone back to work under less than ideal circumstances and some have very modest retirements.
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I think that some of the negative sentiments expressed on this thread are misplaced anger. The frustration felt by many younger pathologists is unfortunately very similar to 15 years ago. This is all due to the JOB MARKET.
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Again dude.
Private Practice pathologists of that generation either make 600 to 700k or made 3 million selling their practices and now make 300 to 400 k and probably have ten weeks off a year. A half time guy I know works 21 weeks a year and makes 300 k. He is 75. Why the hell should he stop. He can do all that **** you say he should do and still make more than enough money to support his life and not have to eat into savings. You have absolutely no idea what it means to have a second wife or kids in medical school or grandkids you want to set up for their future. You would do exactly the same if you could. But the reality us that most if us never will have that opportunity given the likely future of medicine.
Private Practice pathologists of that generation either make 600 to 700k or made 3 million selling their practices and now make 300 to 400 k and probably have ten weeks off a year. A half time guy I know works 21 weeks a year and makes 300 k. He is 75. Why the hell should he stop. He can do all that **** you say he should do and still make more than enough money to support his life and not have to eat into savings. You have absolutely no idea what it means to have a second wife or kids in medical school or grandkids you want to set up for their future. You would do exactly the same if you could. But the reality us that most if us never will have that opportunity given the likely future of medicine.
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Thanks for defining entitlement. (none of us newbies can hope for any of that, and in addition have 250,000 debt...but please keep eating fatties)
I repeat half the old men and women in my program need to go out to pasture. They have either lost it or never had it to begin with.
I am sure this is not unique.
(The oldest one is also the best, so its not just age, but some people are just there because they have been there a long time, and its time for them to go, or at least re-certify...oh wait yet another thing they don't have to do, ever.)
I repeat half the old men and women in my program need to go out to pasture. They have either lost it or never had it to begin with.
I am sure this is not unique.
(The oldest one is also the best, so its not just age, but some people are just there because they have been there a long time, and its time for them to go, or at least re-certify...oh wait yet another thing they don't have to do, ever.)
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I agree with the misplaced anger comments. You all should not have entered pathology if you want to be treated and compensated well as a young physician. You honestly have ZERO leverage and need to learn your place. In fact you may have had more leverage as a med student before you decided to become a commodity pathologist. Do not say you were not warned. And if you weren't, your mentors failed you. You are and will be a lackey for hospital admin (maybe even a senior lab tech), physician colleagues, insurance company, government, CAP, ABP, and last but definitely not least senior pathologist who holds the ever-declining valued contracts.
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I dont have a clue why anyone would wanna work in pathology past upper 40s or early 50s. If you cant put together a great nest egg by that time, you must have been living too extravagantly. Take it from Webb Pinkerton, dont ruin your back, neck and eyes by stayin in this field. Make your money and move on.
Pathstudent, you don't have to explain to me as if I don't understand why these guys don't want to give it up from their perspective. I get that. I've gotten that from the very beginning. It's not that I can't see that it's an easy job at that point, and they can still make great money. I'm just saying it sucks for the rest of us that it will never be this way and we missed the boat. It is frustrating. How do you not understand THAT?
But no, I would NOT do the same and work forever because I could. Do you have a second wife, kids in med school, and grandkids- is this why you know how much all this costs, and I don't? I'm not naive. But at some point if you don't live extravagantly, you have enough money. But hey, I drive a Honda. Sounds like you still need to cover the plastic surgery on the second wife. Maybe that's the problem...
Thrombus, I honestly did not realize how bad the situation was when I chose pathology. Much of the negativity I heard came from people who were unhappy people regardless, so I guess I did not take them that seriously. I should have done more research and better known what I was getting into. You are right about that. What's amazing is I am one of the lucky ones who has a job that is everything I could have asked for. But it upsets me watching many of my colleagues who have not been so lucky and seeing the utter crap jobs they are stuck in.
Bosco, thanks for chiming in regarding that ugly "entitlement" word that everyone loves to throw around at us. Like it's JUST us.
But no, I would NOT do the same and work forever because I could. Do you have a second wife, kids in med school, and grandkids- is this why you know how much all this costs, and I don't? I'm not naive. But at some point if you don't live extravagantly, you have enough money. But hey, I drive a Honda. Sounds like you still need to cover the plastic surgery on the second wife. Maybe that's the problem...
Thrombus, I honestly did not realize how bad the situation was when I chose pathology. Much of the negativity I heard came from people who were unhappy people regardless, so I guess I did not take them that seriously. I should have done more research and better known what I was getting into. You are right about that. What's amazing is I am one of the lucky ones who has a job that is everything I could have asked for. But it upsets me watching many of my colleagues who have not been so lucky and seeing the utter crap jobs they are stuck in.
Bosco, thanks for chiming in regarding that ugly "entitlement" word that everyone loves to throw around at us. Like it's JUST us.
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Maybe because they find it fulfilling and it makes them happy? Some people love working and manage to balance it with a satisfying personal life also...
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cjw0918- This reality is often brushed aside in this forum. Any thoughts on why?
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On what planet do you live in where "this reality" is brushed aside on this forum? It gets posted about every 35 seconds.
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I've come to the conclusion that a significant proportion of the personas that post on this forum are a little cracked . . . . . . . at least a little.
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yaah- Alright, fair enough. It is concerning when pathology residents (and practicing pathologists who are looking for a new job, for that matter) tell me (or post on this forum) that they are surprised about how tough the pathology job market is and how many bad jobs are out there. To me, it is a very different situation if one appreciates they have to be willing to move, do 2 fellowships, etc. versus not fully appreciating this. I have asked a few residents about this forum and they stated that they thought that people posting negative comments about the job market were probably crackpots. It does seem to me that people expressing concerns/frustrations and a desire to see a significant reduction in residency slots are met with more resistance and/or insults in this forum. Hey, maybe I'm wrong. Obviously you are more familiar with this forum than I am.
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Waaaaah waaaaah waaaah.
Question: How does one achieve good outcomes?
Answer: experience
Question: how does one gain experience?
Answer: bad outcomes.
There may be some bad pathologists with 20 years experience, but they are way better than they were 20 years ago.
And anyone who took boards before 2007 has lifetime certificate so don't hate on the old timers for not having to moc.
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Right. I have to get up in the morning at 10 o'clock at night half an hour before I go to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day at the slide mill, and pay the lab director for permission to come to work, and when I get home, my wife and children kill me and dance about on my grave singing Hallelujah. And you try and tell the old pathologists of today that ..... they won't believe you....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
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The only way we will ever see cuts in resident training positions if the funding is cut from above (i.e. Congress cuts the budget for CMS). Even then many programs will find ways to fund their spots internally.
I did see this in today's WSJ. Even prestigious law schools are going to cut their number of law school admissions because of the lack of quality jobs available for their graduates. And it says law schools make a lot of money of training lawyers, so this is quite suprising.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...8411514818378.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Law schools are experimenting with a novel solution to the nation's glut of attorneys: mint fewer of them.
Faced with a weak job market for lawyers and a dwindling number of applicants, several law schools are cutting the size of their incoming classes, a move legal experts describe as unprecedented.
.Law-school class sizes fluctuate from year to year and, in isolated cases, schools have reduced enrollment in the past to lower their student-to-teacher ratio or to reflect the jobs picture in their region.
But experts say that the planned reductions by at least 10 of the roughly 200 laws schools accredited in the U.S., suggest a new reality is sinking in: The legal profession may never return to its prerecession prosperity.
"This looks like it's a big structural shift," says William Henderson, an Indiana University law professor who studies the market for law jobs. "Law schools don't think this is going to bounce back."
In previous economic downturns, the number of law-school applicants increased, as students who would otherwise have looked for jobs found temporary refuge studying for an advanced degree. But the number of law-school applicants this year is 65,119, down 14% from a year earlier, according to the Law School Admission Council Inc., a nonprofit corporation that administers the Law School Admission Test.
"We're going down in a down market," says Frank Wu, dean of the University of California's San Francisco-based Hastings College of the Law, a top-tier school that has taken some of the most drastic steps to "reboot" legal education.
The school plans to whittle its total enrollment to about 1,000 from 1,300 in phases over the next three years. The cuts could cost the school $9 million, Mr. Wu says.
Daniel B. Rodriguez, dean of Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, says he is "taking a close look" at reducing the size of its incoming class, as a nod to the grim job prospects for attorneys, but also to raise admission standards and improve the school's program.
Northwestern's law school is ranked 12th in the country by U.S. News & World Report, whose annual surveys are widely followed by prospective students.
Shrinking class size could help schools maintain their all-important U.S. News rankings even as the pool of applicants declines. By cutting the number of places available, a law school can be just as selective, or even more so, about prospective students' LSAT scores and undergrad grade-point averages.
"They are trying to get a class that mirrors prior classes, but with fewer applicants and enrollees," says Indiana University's Mr. Henderson.
The number of law graduates per year spiked to 44,495 this year from 42,673 in 2006, and the American Bar Association accredited 10 new law schools over the same period.
But the high-paying law-firm jobs many of those students had hoped to land are in short supply, and some top firms have scaled back their hiring of entry-level lawyers by as much as half since the financial crisis started in 2008.
"This is long overdue," Mr. Wu says of the class reductions. "The expectations about law school have been out of whack since I was in law school," he says, adding that he earned his law degree in 1991 and practiced at Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco before entering academia.
For the law-school class of 2011, employment rates are at an 18-year low, according to a survey by the NALP, a nonprofit educational association for the legal profession.
About 86% of graduates found jobs in what NALP described as the worst market since 1994, when the employment rate was 85%. Less than 66% of those jobs required a law license, the lowest rate since the association began collecting the data in the 1980s, the survey said.
In recent months, law-school graduates have filed more than a dozen lawsuits around the country accusing law schools of misleading prospective students by advertising that a high percentage of their graduates were employed, without specifying whether the jobs required a law degree.
The schools have movedsuccessfully, in at least one caseto dismiss the lawsuits, arguing that they strictly followed American Bar Association rules and maintained accurate job-placement data.
Still, most law schools aren't planning to shrink. They include Thomas M. Cooley Law School, the largest in the nation, with 3,700 students, and among the first to be sued over its job-placement numbers.
.The independent school, which has campuses in Michigan and recently expanded into Florida, has defended its practices, saying they met ABA requirements.
Cooley "isn't interested in reducing the size of its entering class on the basis of the perceived benefit to society," says associate dean James Robb.
"Cooley's mission is inclusiveness," adds Mr. Robb, who says he worries reducing class sizes could disproportionately affect minority students.
Paul Schiff Berman, dean of the George Washington University Law School, ranked 20th by U.S. News, says the school, which enrolled about 480 students in 2011, hasn't decided how many slots would be cut for the incoming class, but he estimates the reduction would cost the school about $1 million.
While Mr. Berman says his school could absorb the loss, that kind of shortfall could have big financial repercussions at other institutions.
Law schools are considered profit centers at many universities. If they can't find external funding to plug the probable revenue gap, some of them might have to consider such moves as pay cuts, paring back faculty and staff and reducing nonsalary costs, legal-industry experts say.
"Putting a university on a sudden diet is not easy," says Marianne B. Culhane, dean of the Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Neb., which in late 2009 made a deal with Creighton University to enroll 20 fewer students a year for as long as five years.
Even if they want to slim down, many law schools will have a hard time persuading their universities that the cuts are warranted, says Ms. Culhane.
In Creighton's case, she says, "We didn't think if people were going to have trouble getting jobs that we ought to be trying to get as many to come to law school."
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Seems to me like the funding sources are substantially different. Law schools appear to get the vast majority of their funding from their students -- current tuition, and of course alumni donations -- no? In order to get student volume for tuition and alumni donations from successful alumni, they generally need a good reputation -- and part of that includes job placement of their graduates. For a while that wasn't particularly a problem, and it was beneficial for an institution to open a law school -- grab a handful of professors and dump everyone into a big lecture hall for a few years, all relatively cheap, so having a law school was almost free money. I guess the job market is finally so bad for them that institutions are losing out in the competition for folks wanting a law degree.
Funding for residencies is quite different, and it doesn't yet matter as much whether one's graduates get a job, just whether they get a decent fellowship (and they're approaching a dime a dozen). I think you may have a point that residency positions just aren't going anywhere until the funding for them dries up, or med school deans decide to re-organize and put the pathology program spots somewhere more visibly "service oriented" (as far as the other voting departments are concerned) like anesthesia or IM or ortho or whatever. Programs benefit from more spots, and lose out otherwise, so more spots is what they have to fight for.
Funding for residencies is quite different, and it doesn't yet matter as much whether one's graduates get a job, just whether they get a decent fellowship (and they're approaching a dime a dozen). I think you may have a point that residency positions just aren't going anywhere until the funding for them dries up, or med school deans decide to re-organize and put the pathology program spots somewhere more visibly "service oriented" (as far as the other voting departments are concerned) like anesthesia or IM or ortho or whatever. Programs benefit from more spots, and lose out otherwise, so more spots is what they have to fight for.
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The people met with insults are usually those posting their good experiences. They are called delusional or non-representative.
When I talk to people offline their comments are more likely to be something like, "I heard the job market was bad but it seemed fine for me." You can take this for what it is. Maybe I know a lot of delusional people or really good applicants. The people I talk to who have serious trouble often have major issues with their candidacy. Most everyone agrees the job market is not great though.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a legitimate moderate opinion on the internet. It's like politics. Either you agree 100% with the most extreme argument (unless it's accompanied by psychotic behavior) or you are (pick one) an idiot, delusional, in denial, a plant for "the authorities."
One can have different degrees of opinion. A disagreement about part of an opinion or the tone of that opinion does not mean complete disagreement. That is part of the problem with the internet.
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who has time to come up with this stuff?
Someone who is getting paid to write a humorous and somewhat insightful article for a sports-oriented website, natch.
[
Today I was chatting to the head of my group and he was telling me how they've had 8-10 random calls from people in residency/fellowship about any available positions. I guess I was surprised to hear this since its a pretty rural area.
Today I was chatting to the head of my group and he was telling me how they've had 8-10 random calls from people in residency/fellowship about any available positions. I guess I was surprised to hear this since its a pretty rural area.
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I posted this in November- reposting in regards to this topic:
I don't think that our undesirable job market situation means that you unequivocally cannot go into pathology. My take is that in our specialty it is much harder to get a good job- and to keep the job good (yes, I mean it that way). A lot of the misunderstanding (and I was definitely guilty of this) revolves around the concept of "everyone is getting a job- it can't be that bad". The oversupply continues to affect us when we're in that job position, which really took me by surprise😱 There is a large pool not only of new grads but also of practicing pathologists looking to get out of their current situation. All the mailing of CV's, cold calling, etc. that has been going on for years starts to put ideas in the heads of group leaders, chairmen, administrators and businesspeople (Ameripath for example). Finding your niche in an evolving area such as molecular pathology or becoming an "expert" in a specific area are examples of things you may consider as a way to still do pathology. Only trying to help with these thoughts. <!-- / message --><!-- SDNCODE: one sig per thread -->
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Pathologists are a dime a dozen. You have to find a way to make yourself stand apart that has nothing to do with reading slides or throw-away research articles. Too bad pathology residency doesn't teach you how to do it.
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Had lunch awhile back with a business manager of a large pathology (one of those 25+ ones) and she said that the most common pathology group is the small group (5 pathologists) covering a hospital or two. But while it is the most common (and typically the most lucrative scenario, i.e. classical private practice) it now only represent 37% of the job market. In the 90s it was probaly 80% of the job market. So those private practice partnership tracks are defininitely dwindling.
Of course people can still find great jobs, but I think there has been an increase in bad jobs. I have never met any Ameripath/Quest employee who didn't have serious resenment against the company unless they were one of the ones who sold and pocketed the windfall. Then I don't think working at a path mill or being a pod lab pathologist would be all that great, but there are probably a few people that love it.
Academics is chock full of great jobs if you value the lifestyle and non-paycheck benefits from being in a university environement.
Of course people can still find great jobs, but I think there has been an increase in bad jobs. I have never met any Ameripath/Quest employee who didn't have serious resenment against the company unless they were one of the ones who sold and pocketed the windfall. Then I don't think working at a path mill or being a pod lab pathologist would be all that great, but there are probably a few people that love it.
Academics is chock full of great jobs if you value the lifestyle and non-paycheck benefits from being in a university environement.
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Value the lifestyle in academics? Like working 13 hour days, coming in on Saturday to sign out and do research projects, staying in the hospital all night doing frozens, and having to use your "protected research/off-service time" as vacation days?
Amen. Been there done that.
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haha, right? all for the intangible benefit of pretending to be smarter/better than your private practice counterparts in the presence of your subordinate residents who don't know any better
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Well that is just ridiculous. The typical attending I know would be on service 3 out of 4 weeks with 4-5 of their off weeks were dedicated vacation (so they are on service basically 36-38 weeks, on vacaation 4-5 weeks and at work off-service 10 weeks. They typically would be in 8-4 or 5 or 9-5 or 6. Yes some weeks would be busier than others but that was typical. Yes some would be in earlier or stay later but that was due to their personality.
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Never saw that happen where I trained. But many of the faculty were told that when they were recruited.
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