surg path felllowship a must for private practice?

[suckerfree]

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despite the fact that i am at an AP heavy program, the prevailing thought here is that if you are going to practice surg path or general pathology in a tertiary care center after residency a surgical pathology fellowship is mandatory. I never knew that this would be the case before residency. Do you agree that to be fit for independent practice where surgical pathology sign out will be a big part of you routine after residency, a surgical pathology fellowship in addition to another fellowship is necessary?

 

[yaah]

It's not mandatory or necessary, depending on you. I suppose there are some practices that would like you to do it. It may in part depend on where you train. It may also depend on what you did your fellowship in (if anything) that was not general surg path. I did not do general surg path and neither did one of my colleagues (both did one subspecialty fellowship) and we had no problem at all.

I'm not sure where that prevailing thought comes from. Maybe it's a local thing.

 

[LADoc00]

A fellowship of some sort maybe good, surg path specifically...no

 

[2121115]

My understanding is that if you are at a program with strong surgpath training then a surgpath fellowship is not necessary and perhaps even redundant. I'm sure that there are many programs out there that would love to have a board certified pathologist writing their reports, fielding scut-work calls, and "managing the gross room". It is much more valuable to get a job somewhere for a year and get experience signing out cases. A surgpath fellowship that doesn't include sign-out responsibilities is basically just another year of residency.

 

[deleted57552]

A fellowship of some sort maybe good, surg path specifically...no

Agreed. A surg path year is good if you still need additional experience. But it is better to do a subspecialty fellowship instead. When I was looking for jobs, most of the advertisements wanted the candidate to do a subspecialty fellowship rather than a general surg path fellowship.

 

[SLUsagar]

Agreed. A surg path year is good if you still need additional experience. But it is better to do a subspecialty fellowship instead. When I was looking for jobs, most of the advertisements wanted the candidate to do a subspecialty fellowship rather than a general surg path fellowship.

but again, it completely depends on geographic location. 'Round here, most folks expect a new hire to have done SP fellowship. Having subspecialty expereience is a bonus, but far from requisite.

 

[LADoc00]

but again, it completely depends on geographic location. 'Round here, most folks expect a new hire to have done SP fellowship. Having subspecialty expereience is a bonus, but far from requisite.

If round here implies the Bay Area/California, then no, most folks dont expect you have done a SP. If you are a graduate of certain programs people might ASSUME you did it, but I have personally never met a group that was looking for a person who had specifically done one. Though they might be out there.

 

[listeriaismfb]

I came from a place where the conventional wisdom was that in order to work private practice an additional year of sp was a must. This was fostered by the very competitive job market and the contraction of AP/CP residency training from 5 years to 4. The thinking was that the job market demands a minimum of 5 years of training, irrespective of what the ABP says is adequate.

This is a regional thing, I imagine. If you spend all your elective time doing sp, then a fellowship may seem like overkill...