Where to Practice Pathology? Comments from a Personal Journey

This article concerns the years I spent in practicing anatomic pathology in various places and the evolution of my opinion that location and specialization are linked. I am going to assume that those of us who practice pathology know how to describe the nature of our duties and responsibilities as well as how we got to that point, whether as generalist or specialist. In addition, we know geographically and institutionally where we presently are. My personal experience and observations, admittedly anecdotal, have been that pathologists commonly practice in one or at the most two locations during the course of a career. The reasons are multifactorial, but my comments here suggest that it need not be a foreordained conclusion that where one starts is where one finishes.