Good morning, I'm a third year undergrad Premed Biology student at the moment. I'm interested in going into either Pathology or Radiology. I know I'm still a very long ways off but it helps having a rough idea of what field I want to go into for interviews and stuff.
Originally I was dead set on Radiology because of my interest in computers and technology, it combines my two interests of medicine and technology into one field, but I don't want to rule out pathology yet. Reason is, I find histology a bit more interesting than anatomy, and I have heard Radiology is one of the worst fields to go into in terms of lifestyle choice because of the volume of scans their expected to process (I've also heard the call is brutal). I'm also a bit afraid AI will replace much of the work Radiologists will do in the future.
How does Pathology compare? Is it better as a lifestyle field? Is the call less terrible?
Thank you.
In terms of call they are both pretty much the same: minimal. Most private rads groups are using nighthawk style coverage right now which means zero call really, they cover it by telerads in Australia (day when it is our night).
In terms of raw hours, rads is more. Average day, I get in the same time as my rads folks around 8-9am but leave by 4-5 and they are here until 5-7. I would guess, very roughly, they work on average 5 hours more per weekDAY. I do basically nothing on the weekends aside from side hustle businesses I do, rads rotate a guy for interventional coverage coming out to another 2 hours averaged per week. So in the end, they are doing 7 or so average hours more than me. Not sure if 7 hours is material to you, but to me that is.
Income is basically equivalent between us or I am ahead of them by a bit. At my encouraging, they wrapped up some very nice referral contract work some years ago and came back into my income range. There was a short period of time though I was way ahead. I would guess on average though, rads is ahead of path by 15% nationally in income (but again also on hours nationally as well).
Residency is pretty much the same to be honest, although there are some path residency programs that are pure cusssshhh I wouldnt go there as the training is poor.
Rads is much more competitive of a specialty to match into. I would guess 2x or more competitive. Path used to be essentially non-competitive.
Rads is vastly cooler if you are a single guy (or even gal I imagine). You will have vastly more quality relationship/mating options, be invited to better social circles and generally have more street cred than path in general. Rad techs are really the equivalent of nurses/PAs for surgeons and provide a constant halo of younger folks to associate with. Path is a cave. We dont have the equivalent of rad techs/nurses/PAs to associate with and our main ancillary histotechs work at night when we are asleep making all our slides.
As dumb as it sounds, it actually matters: Radiology as a word has better connotation in English than Pathology. Pathology has almost exclusively negative connotation and the word itself is derived the greek
Pathos meaning suffering. This will have a near constant subconscious affect, whether you admit it or not, on the "Id" portion of a psyche which will then manifest in unpredictable ways to the ego and superego. This indicates that pathologists as a group likely grapple far more with mental illness/substance abuse/self worth issues than radiologists although I cant point to a real data set to prove this.
You will have more fellow rads in pretty much any setting than fellow paths. Radiologists staff at almost a 2-3:1 ratio to Pathologists.
there you go.
