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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Another perspective. My spouse is an MD/PhD (so no debt of any kind in exchange for an extra 4 years of training--MD/PhDs are fully funded).

I saved for retirement on behalf of both of us and we entered attendinghood at age 33 with over 600k in retirement. It was  supertough, but market timing and intense budgeting diligence did the trick.

He's also a subspecialty pathologist. Currently makes 270k and can expect raises, eventually topping out at 400k. The chair of his department makes more like 550k.

It's a 9-6 role. He doesn't interface with patients at all; he's almost like a specialized computer scientist. Low stress. NEVER works nights or weekends. The lifestyle is simply amazing.

For all these reasons, pathologists tend to have long careers--there are paths in their late 70s still tottering around hospitals (for better or worse--this isn't our plan).

Yeah, we're rich. Subspecialty pathology feels like one of medicine's best-kept secrets, especially in the COVID era. [/quote]

I am a subspecialist pathologist (we are basically all subspecialists now, except for a few people who only do a surgical pathology fellowship and they go to private practice).

Your husband’s experience is very different than my experience and that of my friends/colleagues (most in our early to mid 40’s).

We all work long hours, including weekends, and get held up in the hospital for frozen sections. There is enough variability in our hours that we can’t always be there for daycare pickups, necessitating nannies or other high-cost childcare arrangements.. It’s actually an fairly high stress job - you look under a microscope at pieces of tissue that are often tiny, put a name on it, and then a surgery is performed or chemo is given based on your call. If a pathologist screws up it’s a big deal - and (depending on the speciality) we will see dozens of specimens/day. It’s a lot of responsibility with time pressure on frozen sections, and I wouldn’t characterize it as low stress. It is true that we don’t have to deal with patients, but dealing with the other doctors can be aggravating.

Most of the early/mid career hospital-based pathologists I know in the DMV make in the mid 200s-300s (except for our colleagues at Hopkins who I hear are making significantly less than that). We can make better money if we move to the middle of nowhere, though.

Your husband has a unicorn of a job. Perhaps he is in laboratory information systems, molecular diagnostics or artificial intelligence/image analysis?  I will hope for your sake that the chairman and the hospital administration stay benign. I fear that the money-grubbing administrators will find the path dept soon enough, though.

Also, I think that those long careers in path are going to be a thing of the past as the admins try to drive out the older guys (they are expensive).. A number of my friends are just burned out, and recently made the jump to industry. I am considering it, too.
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