Laboratory medicine needs higher profile with medical students,MDs, pathologists say.

Laboratory medicine is a troubled specialty these days, buffeted by the conflicting pressures of reduced funding for more work and a declining physician population. A consortium of laboratory physicians has produced a report on the future of pathology and laboratory medicine, which explores the problems facing the specialties and some potential solutions. Raising the profile of laboratory medicine among medical students and eventual unification of pathology and the various arms of laboratory medicine are among the suggested solutions.     

Suicide totals for MDs sad reminder of stresses facing medicine,conference told.

A recent conference on physician health cosponsored by the CMA and American Medical Association provided some sobering news. One physician reported on the suicides of physicians practising in the US. Another reported that inroads being made by managed health care is affecting physician morale. "Physicians'' lifetime calling of caring for the sick is being called into question," said Dr. Patricia Tighe. "They have become like factory workers who can''t take pride in their work and are denied a sense of belonging. They are part of a corporate enterprise, to be dispensed with when they are not profitable, and subjected to penalties if their work doesn''t measure up".