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.