PATH News Network Daily Edition

Navigating Career Transitions in a Changing Pathology Job Market

• College of American Pathologists

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Getting ahead in your career. The CAP offers advice on dealing with the seven-year itch and how to brush up your CV. Plus, inside a Tokyo lab where robots are running the show. This is Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Nancy Johnson. It's Wednesday, June 3rd. The seven-year itch. It's that creeping desire to move upward and onward in your career. For many, that itch may hit sooner, prompting both excitement and uncertainty about how to start the transition. If you're eyeing your next move in pathology and want to discuss directions, networking, risks, and more, a June 30th webinar will help. Pathologists from the CAP's New and Practice Committee will lead the discussion, focusing on pathways, practical considerations, and challenges in early career transitions. There will also be plenty of time for QA. Dr. Jennifer Wu, Medical Director of Blood Bank and Transfusion Services at City of Hope National Medical Center, is one of the session's panelists. She says the webinar is a place for open discussion and honest feedback from colleagues who have made leaps of their own.

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I think the webinar is a safe space for early career pathologists to talk about where they want to go with their career. Is the current trajectory great or are we looking for something new? And we want to show Pathologist One that changes not horrible. And if you do want to change your institution or even change your career progression, people have done it. And we want to show that it is possible. Here are some of our experiences. Here are some advice for those who are looking into a career transition.

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The session will help you identify transferable skills and think about next moves depending on your stage of training and practice. Dr. Wu says the discussion will also explore roads less traveled in pathology, including fill in Locum's Tenon's work that can be more flexible and positions in industry. Register for the Early Career Challenges webinar under the calendar of events on the CAP homepage. No matter where you are in your career, there's one piece of paper every pathologist needs, the CV. Love them or hate them, CVs need regular attention and updates. If you've let yours get a little dusty or just need some guidance on updating and tailoring your CV to a new career pathway, a July 14th webinar will give you tips and strategies far beyond just formatting. The session will explore how employers interpret CVs and which experiences are most valued across practice settings. Go to the CAP calendar of events to register. To get a good job in pathology, you need to get a fellowship and subspecialize. Or at least that's been the traditional thinking. But a new analysis in the archives of pathology and laboratory medicine finds that interest in fellowship declines in a strong job market. A team from Northeast Ohio Medical University and Ohio State University reviewed and compared job and fellowship postings, page views, and other factors posted on PathologyOutlines.com from 2015 to 2024. As job openings surged, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic, fellowship page views decreased with a steady decline from 2017 to 2022. The decrease occurred despite an increase in the number of fellowship postings. For trainees considering their options, the recent 2025 Practice Leader Survey found that more than half of respondents planned to hire at least one full-time pathologist, and 58% were seeking pathologists with general expertise. And finally, speaking of desirable job skills, could robot management soon enter the list? A new article in the journal Nature may offer hints of the future with a spotlight on a Tokyo biology lab run partly by 10 robots. The Robotics Innovation Center at the Institute of Science Tokyo uses the robots to conduct experiments, grow cells on plates, and operate scientific instruments, among other tasks. The droids contain AI software that lets them make decisions, including analyzing and improving lab experiments. Automation researcher Dr. Genki Kanda says the lab will open to other researchers at the Institute later this year, with the ultimate goal of creating a factory-scale facility with thousands of robots by 2050. That's all for today's Daily Edition. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on today's stories. Got a story you'd like for us to cover on the Daily Edition? Write to us at stories at CAP.org. We're back at 5 a.m. Eastern for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Nancy Johnson. Have a great day.