Patient Contact

[Firebird]

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I haven't been around much at this forum lately...so I wanted to bring up a (semi) old topic regarding patient contact in Pathology.

How much patient contact do most pathologists have? I suspect that the most patient contact comes to doctors employed by hospitals, and not those in private practice.

Thoughts?

 

[GreatPumpkin]

I would suspect that the pathologists employed by hospitals and those that are in private group practice have the same patient contact they provide the same services for the hospital just one is an employee and one is a contractor.

The amount of patient contact will really depend on the individual practice. Pathologists that run FNA clinics get abundant contact. Ones that do nothing but general surgical path get little. The blood bank director in my program goes to the floors and sees patients everyday. The neuropath head never sees patients.

But, I must stress to everyone the patient contact we get is of the consultant role not the long term care as in FP or IM. So if this is the contact you are looking for path may not be for you.

 

[Firebird]

That's interesting. I am not partial at all to long-term care, so the role of consultant is just fine with me.

I shadowed a doctor who had zero patient contact and I just don't think that would satisfy me. Even if I spent only a small fraction of the day with patients, I would be happy, I think.

I was unaware that private practice pathologists worked as contractors. Sounds a lot like the situation in some ED's. For some reason I had the picture that private practice people had slides shipped to them from the hospital and that's mostly what they did. And I figured the same hospitals that used that service probably had one or two pathologists on staff to do FNA's, run the blood bank, etc. etc. Thanks for clearing that up.