I'm not a physician. I work in the laboratory grossing surgical specimens. Our work never stops. There are almost always cases to complete, except for some rare days where there is a lull in cases before the end of my shift (typically the night before certain holidays if they stop doing surgeries...or sometimes a bunch of surgeons will take their vacations at the same time lol). This does also mean that I get to have standard holidays off, unlike a field like nursing or any role in the ER.

It varies, though. Some labs are very slow where you actually do get a fair amount of downtime and some are even busier and more bustling than mine. I'd say we are a fairly busy lab, but we don't generally get ultra complex surgical resections like hospitals even larger than mine do. We still do get large cases, just not things like pieces of people's faces, etc.

It's an interesting field.

You mention that you had a lot of down time in nursing, but I'd say I depends on the field and facility with that too. My mom is a nurse and has had nursing jobs similar to how you described. She said she would get a lot more downtime when she worked in large hospital settings and worked overnight. Usually overnights seemed to be the quietest. But then she was worked other types of facilities where she really hardly has time to sit down and take much of a break.

Even at my hospital, some of our pathologists will manage to fly through their cases and head out early (our director manages to make it so he always has a lighter caseload than the rest lol)...while others are always working late into the night working on additional duties like tumor boards.

So ymmv depending on what role and what type of facility you're at yeah.

Even though I work all day, I think I have a good work-life balance and really enjoy being at work with my coworkers.