Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1222.00
Physicians, Pathologists
Diagnose diseases and conduct lab tests using organs, body tissues, and fluids. Includes medical examiners.
- US jobs
- 11,110
- Median wage
- $312,400 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of physicians, pathologists?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Examine microscopic samples to identify diseases or other abnormalities.
- Diagnose diseases or study medical conditions, using techniques such as gross pathology, histology, cytology, cytopathology, clinical chemistry, immunology, flow cytometry, or molecular biology.
- Write pathology reports summarizing analyses, results, and conclusions.
- Communicate pathologic findings to surgeons or other physicians.
- Identify the etiology, pathogenesis, morphological change, and clinical significance of diseases.
- Read current literature, talk with colleagues, or participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in pathology.
- Consult with physicians about ordering and interpreting tests or providing treatments.
- Analyze and interpret results from tests, such as microbial or parasite tests, urine analyses, hormonal assays, fine needle aspirations (FNAs), and polymerase chain reactions (PCRs).
- Review cases by analyzing autopsies, laboratory findings, or case investigation reports.
- Manage medical laboratories.
- Develop or adopt new tests or instruments to improve diagnosis of diseases.
- Educate physicians, students, and other personnel in medical laboratory professions, such as medical technology, cytotechnology, or histotechnology.
Other job titles for this occupation (28)
Anatomic Pathologist · Cytopathologist · Dermatopathologist · Forensic Pathologist · Hematopathologist · Neuropathologist · Oral Pathologist · Pathologist · Surgical Pathologist · Animal Pathologist · Autopsy Pathologist · Chemical Pathologist · Clinical Pathologist · Cytologist · DO Physician (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine Physician) · Histopathologist · Immunopathologist · Medical Pathologist · Molecular Genetic Pathologist · Molecular Pathologist · Ocular Pathologist · Ophthalmic Pathologist · Pathologist Physician · Pathology Physician · Pediatric Pathologist · Physician · Poultry Pathologist · Veterinary Pathologist