Pediatric Pathology fellow

[mapledale]

Would you please let me know the job market of Pediatric pathology? Thanks.

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[djmd]

Crappy?
no?

ok how about limited to larger academic sites for the most part. Better answer?

 

[PathOne]

Mostly academic, so it's probably something you'd want to do because you really like it, not because you want to make a bundle. Includes some fairly interesting stuff, but personally, I rather disliked the autopsy component. It's just really time-consuming to do those sometimes.

 

[yaah]

Very few opportunities (but they do exist) in private practice. Mostly academics. The fellowships often have a hard time filling because there is so little interest in general. It won't make it harder to get a job though, there are lots of places looking for people with pediatric path expertise. Most of them are academic centers though.

 

[mlw03]

would there not be opportunities at a children's hospital? for example, in the tampa bay area there is All Children's Hospital (affiliated with USF), but also a big pediatric component to a private hospital. there's also a large private women's hospital where i would think a peds pathologist may be needed to deal with fetal and/or placental pathology (something that falls under their domain as i understand it). so i would think while the majority of jobs may be at academic centers, there would also be opportunities at private institutions. however in these cases i would expect that pathologist would also do general surg path, but would serve as the group's expert on pediatric pathology (something i'm told happens with a lot of the AP specialties, like GU or GYN). someone please correct me if i'm mistaken.

 

[djmd]

You are not mistake, and as many people say rare hospitals (non-academic) exist that have enough ped path volume to get a ped path person (who signs out surgical path too).

But most places don't have enough peds path to make looking for such a person reasonable.

I guess one could do peds path, and just work general surgical path at a local hospital that doesn't "need" a ped path person. But you would be no more attractive (and maybe a little less attractive) than just an AP/CP pathologist.

 

[yaah]

would there not be opportunities at a children's hospital? for example, in the tampa bay area there is All Children's Hospital (affiliated with USF), but also a big pediatric component to a private hospital. there's also a large private women's hospital where i would think a peds pathologist may be needed to deal with fetal and/or placental pathology (something that falls under their domain as i understand it). so i would think while the majority of jobs may be at academic centers, there would also be opportunities at private institutions. however in these cases i would expect that pathologist would also do general surg path, but would serve as the group's expert on pediatric pathology (something i'm told happens with a lot of the AP specialties, like GU or GYN). someone please correct me if i'm mistaken.

There are a couple of issues though, mainly that pediatrics doesn't produce the same number of specimens as adult medicine. Lots of biopsies are to rule out things that are relatively simple to rule out on biopsy, and many diagnoses require esoteric tests. A pediatric pathologist is key at large childrens hospital, but not at many others.

 

[Potomania]

I don't normally post but I do have a family member in private practice who's group is searching with zero results for a peds pathologist to join them. According to him, they are very difficult to find even for a private group with good income potential because they are so scarce. So, although jobs may be somewhat limited right now they do exist outside academics. Something else he tells me that is opposite from what I've read on this forum is that NP people are very marketable right now in PP for many of the same reasons.