College of American Pathologist Career Opportunities

Engaging Medical Students For A Career In Pathology.

The College of American Pathologists (CAP) Graduate Medical Education Committee has during the past 5 years sent an annual job search survey each June to CAP junior members and fellows in practice 3 years or less who have actively searched for a non-fellowship position. Pathology residents and fellows seeking their first position have faced a relatively stable job market during the last 5 years, with most accepting positions with which they were satisfied.

The current condition of the job market for new graduates emerging from the cocoon of residency or fellowship training programs remains good, according to the detailed, informative, and reassuring report by Gratzinger et al, summarizing the job market surveys from the past 5 years of the College of American Pathologists (Northfield, Illinois), in this issue of the Archives.

More recent analyses of the pathologist job market conclude that in general, pathology trainees can find satisfying jobs in reasonable amounts of time. In a recent survey of first-time job seekers during 2012 through 2016, most respondents reported they found a job within 1 year of searching. Nearly one-third of those respondents received multiple job offers, and there was a high level of satisfaction with the job that they chose. Unpublished results from 2017 show similar, if not better, job search experiences. 

“The sample is ready. I wheel over a chair, adjust the optics, and peer into the glass lens of the microscope. Just a few rooms over, a patient is lying on a table in a room surrounded by spotlights and masked medical personnel. Everyone in that operating room, conscious or not, is waiting for the […]

Compared with 2017, results show an overall increase in salaries for most laboratory occupations surveyed except cytogenetic technologists, laboratory information systems personnel, and performance improvement or quality assurance personnel. Geographically, laboratory professionals from urban areas earned more than their rural counterparts.

A group of medical students, residents, and attending physicians with a shared interest in pathology got together to discuss the obstacles that stood in their paths, their colleagues’ impressions of the discipline, and what can be done to encourage future students to consider pathology.

The pathologist workforce in the United States is a topic of interest to the health-care community as a whole and to institutions responsible for the training of new pathologists in particular. Although a pathologist shortage has been projected, there has been a pervasive belief by medical students and their advisors that there are “no jobs in pathology.”

  Abstract There has been a recent recognition of the need to prepare PhD-trained scientists for increasingly diverse careers in academia, industry, and health care. The PhD Data Task Force was formed to better understand the current state of PhD scientists in the clinical laboratory workforce and collect up-to-date information on the training and certification […]

The American Board of Pathology (ABP) has recently approved a physician-scientist research pathway (PSRP) for pathologists in training. This new pathway was specifically created to increase the recruitment of new physician-scientists to our specialty. Pathology is a unique discipline that is recognized as both a basic biomedical science and a clinical specialty, and it has therefore traditionally attracted energetic, intelligent physician-scientists, interested in studying disease mechanisms at the cellular, molecular, and genetic level. 

Medical students are often unsure about the viability of a career as a physician in pathology. In particular, they are concerned that pathologists may not have a gratifying lifestyle or be well compensated. These worries may cause angst among medical students considering pathology and among junior pathology residents wondering if they made the correct career choice.