Why do people decide to become a pathologist and what are the psychological prerequisites for this?

Pathologist is one of the most challenging medical specialties. Therefore, in order for a person not only to get there, but also to stay there, one needs good brains, the ability to analyze, a decent memory is required.

From purely characterological: patience, attention to detail. Also - responsibility - because this one he not only deals with the dead, the attending physician builds a treatment regimen in accordance with what he read in the conclusion of the pathologist based on the analysis of, for example, a tumor. A pathologist will make a mistake - the wrong treatment will be prescribed.

And so - people are like people. The pathologist, who has worked for a long time, has occupational deformation, of course, but the same as for all doctors (and in general for everyone who works in the "Human-Human" system).

By the way, if interested - in Soviet times, the Canadian writer Arthur Haley was popular. His books were published in the USSR in huge editions. The genre was then called "production novel". Haley has a lot on the topic of the work of a pathologist in the novel "Hospital" (on the Web, you can download it). The action takes place in the USA, it seems, in the 70s of the twentieth century or even a little earlier. Since then, technology has certainly leaped forward. But some things from the field of the human factor, I think, should have remained unchanged.

As a person planning to connect his life with pathological anatomy or sme, I will name the reasons:

1. Responsibility, primarily moral, less than for the living.

2. A more relaxed atmosphere at work, you work at your own pace, no one jerks you. (I will compare surgery.)

3. Desire to get to the bottom of the truth, to understand why this happened, and not in another way.

4. sme receive more than average doctors (well, in Moscow for sure)

5. In the case of sme, the work is not routine - each case is unique.

6. Opportunity to carry out an exposé of historical figures (Romanovs, for example).

As you can see, nowhere is it written about the desire to dismember corpses. Corpses are material for research and nothing more.

I decided to become a pathologist in grade 5 after the death of my beloved grandfather. It seemed to me then that death is the key to understanding life. I was a melancholic little Gothic (Dada, the only one in her own at that time, well, I got tired). Now I understand that this is not all. Patan is the key in general to everything that medicine studies. It is the end point for the patient, but not for the doctors. Pathologists know everything about everyone. At the same time, you do not have to directly communicate with the living, and the morgue is pleasantly cool. Smells? Yes, you get used to it. Corpses? Well, one should be afraid of the living, not the corpses. In general, this is the profession of inquisitive minds. And the fear of corpses is just a cultural feature. In many countries, there is no such attitude towards deaths as we do.

A detailed interview for those who want to hear firsthand opinion on a topic - https://vk.com/izzznanka?w=page-115718282_54191964; https://vk.com/izzznanka?w=page-115718282_54191992. That's the way it is.

First, something tells me what it means, is everything in order with the psyche of people who open corpses. So here it is necessary to distinguish between pathologists and forensic experts. Most of the work of pathologists is microscope and glass. At the same time, they do not have a queue under the office, there are no complaints, there are no endless lectures on the topic of completing bed-days in a hospital, etc. If I liked histology, I would love to go to the pathologist. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t fall in love with gistu)

I have just finished the first year, but I can say for sure that in Meda they lose the feeling of shame and fear of corpses. It may be crazy for you, but more than once I have observed a picture (and myself such), when students let out the intestines of a corpse with burning eyes in order to get to the back abdominal wall. Pathological anatomy and pathophysiology are incredibly difficult sciences! (for example, a picture from the atlas of normal anatomy, which, in theory, any physician should know by heart)

Any craft has costs, but not as strong as you imagine

My sister studied in honey. In college, she worked / practiced in parallel as a nurse in a district hospital. There, at the morgue, there was a vacancy for a pathologist, so there was a shortage of personnel in the regions. Well, it seems like the target, and they sent training to take place. These are the prerequisites.

And so she is a very cheerful person and an optimist. Such a cheerful and smiling pathologist.

My friend explained her dream of becoming a pathologist by her desire to work in medicine and her lack of desire to communicate a lot with people. Introverts - they are!

Very interesting, actually. When I went to the autopsy it was amazing. For ordinary people, death is just cardiac arrest. But no one knows how many secrets were kept in this man during his lifetime. You look at the corpse and see that the person already suffered from dementia, once his kidney was removed, and if you see a yellow-gray-green spot on the heart, then the person had a heart attack, the aorta is cut with a crunch - atherosclerosis. Each organ speaks about human diseases that he did not even know about. It won't even recognize it anymore.

Okay, let's start from the very beginning.

Point number one: Not a single student of honey is intimidated by the role of a pathologist. Well, that is, in general. Yes, the smell is so-so, but we also smell very distinctly of anatomy as a morgue, you can live, in short.

Point number two: all these guys who shoot beatings in films are all pathologists. As they say, do not be afraid of the dead, be afraid of the living.

Point number three-s (the most important): in Ukraine, the price of training in honey is a little more than 100K hryvnia, and all state employees after graduation go straight to hell (on distribution). Here either in Mukhosran, somewhere on the other side of the country, or a family man or a pathologist. After honey, almost everyone dreams of a career as a narrow-profile surgeon and it is much easier to get there from the position of a pathologist + this business is much better paid than that of a family man.

Such cases.

I was always more interested in what the psychological prerequisites for anxiety and fear of a dead body. Well, we are adults and don't really believe in zombies. Otherwise, a dead person is, in principle, safer and more predictable than a living one.

Pathologists become pathologists because these are the most extensive opportunities for studying a person as a biological object. And that's very, very interesting.

There is a desire to enroll in a pathologist. This idea appeared when I realized that I was interested in studying the human body. It's scary to go to a surgeon, I can kill, but you can't kill the dead. Therefore, I think it is better to practice in the company of the dead and gain some experience, and then you can think about surgery.

Probably for the same reason that surgeons become surgeons, and dentists become dentists: they like the peculiarities of this profession, and this is not at all a desire to "dismember dead bodies", but rather an opportunity to get to the bottom of the truth, understand the essence of the disease and explain it other professionals. Of course, this has its own psychological prerequisites: curiosity, research and analytical mindset, depth of knowledge, erudition, a tendency to self-education, science.

I completely agree with the first two answers. Indeed, modern pathological anatomy is predominantly an intravital diagnosis, which is of greatest importance in oncology. This is a very complex specialty that requires constant training and is not always adequately paid.

Today, Russia lacks about 1300 pathologists, and the average workload per doctor is 4 rates.

Therefore those who choose this specialty today are mostly purposeful people who love to think, dream of making scientific discoveries and challenge the system.

Pathologists are one of the most intelligent professions in medicine. To be a good pathologist, you need to have excellent analytical skills and encyclopedic knowledge in the field of medicine. And this is exactly what attracts young doctors.

Well, if you mean working with corpses, then few of the medical students find this any significant factor.