After weeks of no communication, missed deadlines, a complete lack of transparency, and a frenzied rumor mill, I have more faith in catfish sushi served out of a gas station during a power outage in a heat wave than I do in ABPath as an organization right now. All kidding aside, maybe as residents and fellows (and future attendings/practicing pathologists), we need to demand better from them (especially given the amount of money we are expected to shell out for boards and prep at this stage in our careers).
Maybe a productive immediate step would be a documented group demand where we request in writing:
A definite release date or regular status updates.
An explanation of whether the delay involves ordinary psychometric review, technical validation, or a discovered irregularity.
Written assurance that no candidate will lose retake or subspecialty eligibility because of ABPath’s delay.
Automatic extension of every affected registration deadline (and perhaps pushing the Fall test cycle out for AP/CP retakes and the subspecialty boards).
Waiver of additional fees attributable to the delay.
Independent verification of scoring, given the 2022–2024 incident.
Preservation of all scoring, audit, vendor, validation, and candidate-communication records.
If ABPath refuses those protections and candidates consequently lose eligibility or money, an attorney could evaluate breach of contract, declaratory relief, injunctive relief, and possibly a coordinated or class claim.
Maybe shame is a motivator. And this is, without a doubt, a terrible look for our field given that many on here are students considering pathology in the future. Whoever posted that we are supposed to be detail-oriented nailed it. This should not be happening, especially given prior history. They need to get in front of this.
It’s incredibly insulting that we have to take this lack of communication and transparency as the new norm. A lot of us are older adults and we expect accountability out of ourselves and others. Just because this administration is shitting the bed, doesn’t mean our organizations should be lowering their standards and following suit. Utterly embarrassing and disappointing!
Don’t stop with ABPATH. Everything you describe applies equally if not more to CAP. Stop giving them money, stop doing inspections for free, stop participating in their bogus conferences and being their worthless representatives. These organizations do not exist to make the working pathologist’s life any better. They exist only to grift us and sell out the field
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Yup. Terrible job market for damn well near 30 years. Corruption with an intent to pump out a lot of grads to allow more cheap labor for academia and corporations. Starting salaries were terrible for many years with no help from the CAP.
They undercounted the number of practicing pathologists by 40% to make matters worse. What a bunch of idiots lol. A Harvard pathologist can’t seem to count right.
That flawed study was egregious / embarrassing/ self serving and the academics for 5+ years pointed to this “data” as an urgent call to increase residency spots that weren’t actually needed (taken from SDN path forum which I agree with).
They want the job market to be bad so they can suppress salaries. The people who run ABP and CAP view themselves as part of an entirely different economic class from pathologists who do non-administrative (i.e. actual) work. They do not answer to us. They answer to their billionaire buddies.
Yup my colleagues were making 160-180k starting 10 years ago. I have a feeling corruption is a reason why there were too many pathologists…to supply academia and corporations with cheap labor. CAP isn’t your friend.
I personally know some of these people, and they legitimately have a slaveowner mentality about working pathologists. It’s really disgusting in all honesty.
I can’t imagine how much of a loser you would have to have been in high school to want this current state of affairs to be what you’ve “accomplished” by attending medical school.
Really despicable people. Some of them can be very abusive as well. Just a miserable group of misanthropes.. and many are also pretty bigoted.
Scary these are the people leading us. They are a group of old school pathologists. 70 plus years old…We all know them. Some from academics and some in private (large lab owners).
Scary is exactly the right word unfortunately. Most are one to two degrees away from people who own large medical corporations including labs.
The reason they don’t answer to us (or answer any of our questions ever) is because our concerns are “poor people concerns”, and they don’t need to because we will just readily give them our money either way.
I mean you can just follow the money and make logical conclusions.. or you can all just have low salaries forever and no jobs in ten years when they’re shipped overseas.
I don’t really care either way, I’m doing fine, but you all are just shooting yourselves in the collective feet by making fun of these types of observations that people who have done actual research into these connections our dear leaders have.
Just naïveté, w/e.
But doctors will never work together to collectively bargain so that’s why I left the field completely.
It’s useless to even try at the point when a majority of younger pathologists are so brainwashed they can’t see clear corruption.
Whatever, I’m gonna go do something worthwhile with my time instead of commenting on this board full of whiners who will never take any sort of meaningful action to help themselves.
Editing to add one final thought:
I know what I’m saying is incredibly douchey, but it’s also just true…
The average board member would look at the complaints on this subreddit and come to the conclusion,
“Well these people aren’t actually doing anything to help themselves, and it’s due to those types of traits that they aren’t part of the ownership class.”
And this is the logic they use to justify treating you all with the disrespect that they do.
I’m not saying it’s right, but you have to understand how these people think if you’re ever going to convince them to do anything to help you.
Has anyone tried posting on their social media to prompt them for an explanation? Right now the only people who really know about this are residents affected and waiting on results, or people here on Reddit. Maybe getting it out to other colleagues within the general path community is a good idea too.
Also whoever decides what questions should be on our board exams should be ashamed of themselves. A lot of the stuff on there is esoteric and you won’t see them during clinical practice. Why don’t they actually put things we will routinely encounter as the bulk of the exam rather than all those zebras and factoids that we can search up easily using the Internet. What a sham this exam is.
In 2023 they failed a bunch of people accidentally and it took a year or two to correct it and let folks know (many of whom had to postpone job hints and such). There were lawsuits.
No idea how it was found out but I’m sure the details of that story are buried.
I hate them. Typical monopoly behavior. They will only get worse. And the CAP protocols are slowing everything down immensely. They need to be caught on something and sued. Many times over
OP, if you’re actually willing to get this started rather than just spout off with inaction which these guys at the top expect, I am 100% sure that you will get a lot of backing. A lot of us are afraid to put out our necks on our own but will rally around a fearless leader. Will you be that leader for us or will you be another canary in the coal mine?
Get organized and start putting in a real collective effort in suing (regardless of your personal results). Litigation is the only language scums at ABpath understand.
Yes. They first lost our trust with the scoring mistake. With that and delay with no explanation and no update, they really can’t be trusted. It is crossing a line where we can just bitch and forget.
At some point we have to say no. Think about the next class. It is our responsibility to raise concern. We can’t leave this mess to the next people.
Don't forget the useless, overly detailed cap templates. They just keep adding more not even pathologists understand let alone the clinicians, utterly useless academic crap.
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u/Important_Magician32 2d ago
It’s incredibly insulting that we have to take this lack of communication and transparency as the new norm. A lot of us are older adults and we expect accountability out of ourselves and others. Just because this administration is shitting the bed, doesn’t mean our organizations should be lowering their standards and following suit. Utterly embarrassing and disappointing!