As I mentioned before on this blog, I am indebted to Sherry Miller, wife of neuropathologist Doug Miller, MD, PhD, for keeping me updated on neuropathology job openings. As a result, Neuropathology Blog has the most up-to-date and comprehensive listing of neuropathology job openings on the web. And there are a lot of jobs available! Sherry recently wrote me the following email regarding the current status of the neuropathology job market: "What do you think is going on? A shortage? People leaving and moving around? Adding staff? (I don't think this is likely as most places are cutting staff.) There are 28 jobs posted on the blog...now even if 6 are out of date because people haven't responded to the emails, that still leaves an incredible number of vacancies..... Maybe that would be a GOOD blog post? Ask what others think is going on?" I agree, Sherry. That WOULD be a good blog post. The floor is now open for comment......
5 comments:
"Brain disease and disorders are the leading cause of medical disability in the developed world, according to the UN's World Health Organization."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/healthdiseasegeneticsbrain
Based on headlines like this,it looks to me like there will be some job security for your group at least for the short term. Unfortunately drug research exited this country in favor of cheaper markets overseas. So, since biology and genetics do seem to matter now more than ever, how is this trend going to translate into moving promising, safe therapy to the U.S. bedside? My bet: U.S. neuropathologists will be overworked and undervalued...but at least you will have challenging work. And just when you think your job is safe because of increasing demand...Well, maybe all the U.S. based pathologists in the drug industry can give you a heads up on that trend.
A lot of the "graybeards" are retiring, and there aren't enough quality new fellows in the pipeline to take their place. It's become harder and harder to attract good people into neuropathology (whether it be because it's a 2-year fellowship, more basic science-oriented, terrible NIH-funding levels, less lucrative, more mysterious, any or all of the above, or something else.) Plus, a lot of the current fellows don't go into academic, "white-collar" neuropathology (as Agent 86 might say) and instead go into community-based "blue collar" neuropathology (which is >90% "lower-organ" pathology and <10% neuropathology in a lot of cases). Some fellows are forensic pathologists who only want to add a little neuropath expertise to make themselves more marketable to M.E. offices. It would be interesting to see how many of the plethora of job openings are white-collar vs. blue-collar.
Most of these positions are in academic centers with at least one working neuropathologist. My guess is that both the Department Chair and the existing Neuropathologist(s) realize that it is virtually impossible to do academic neuropathology research without additional help from another neuropathologist to cover the clinical and teaching service responsibilities. I hope that some of the neuropathologists at these institutes will post their comments to verify or refute this theory. In any case, I am very glad that there are so many open positions as we negotiate with our Chairs....
This does seem like a large number of job openings, but it would also be useful to know how many trained neuropathologists are looking for jobs right now. This site does an incredible job of listing the positions, but would there be any way for individuals who are "on the market" to post their CV's? Alternatively, maybe it would be possible to arrange some sort of "meet and greet" event at the upcoming AANP meeting, in order to get everyone in the same room.
The meet-and-greet event is a great idea. It could save a lot of money and time for both interviewers and interviewees!
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