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Scutwork.com seems to be down, and SDN is on the up-and-up, so Ill put my review of the Utah pathology program here. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Im a PGY3 Pathology resident at the University of Utah. My wife and I did the couples match Pathology/Anesthesia. We interviewed at 15 excellent programs from east to west coast and ranked Utah #1 for the strength of training in both fields. Neither of us has any regrets.
If you want to know the details of rotations I can give you them, but the highlights are:
Autopsy With the exception of a surprisingly enjoyable month at the medical examiners office, you finish your autopsies in the first year, spread over 6 months. I got 53 autopsies, with 50 being the minimum for boards, pretty much perfect for me. Others have been less fortunate and had 70s.
AP/SurgPath The first week of the first year is overwhelming, but because of senior residents and 3-4 Pathology Assistants in the gross-room, I was able to leave by 6:30 or earlier most every night. You alternate grossing days with microscope days (you will see what you gross plus more) and dont have to go back in the gross room after a day at the scope. When you are a senior you have even fewer grossing days, more time at the scope and more ownership of cases. At Utah you will see rare and interesting cases. There are not many large hospitals in this region of the United States and people with unusual tumors and genetic conditions travel a long ways for medical care at the UofUtah. There is also a required 2-3 months of surgpath in a community practice group, which rounds things out. The one less than ideal situation in surgpath is weekend grossing. When you are on surgpath as a senior or a junior you come in every other Saturday morning to gross for about 5 hours. This was instituted because of the massive number of specimens the University ORs churn out into the wee hours Friday night. It was simply too much for the on-call resident to handle by themselves. So now, there is a PA, a surgpath resident and an on-call resident all grossing together Saturday morning until about 13:00. Teaching on the surgpath rotation is excellent. We have the prestigious old-guard faculty as well as a newer crop of subspecialized surgpath faculty. Surgical pathology offices are centralized and doors are open for you to show cases around.
CP: Id have to write a book to cover all the CP rotations you can do at UofUtah & Associated Regional and University Pathologists (ARUP, which is run by the pathology department of the University of Utah). Check out ARUPs web site: http://www.aruplab.com/ to just see all the tests we offer. Itd also serve you well, wherever you go for residency, to use the ARUP Consult website: http://www.arupconsult.com/index.html which covers vetted testing algorithms for different diseases. ARUP is on the bleeding edge of clinical test development and if you want to put in the time as a resident you could get some phenomenal research done without having to fight for funding. If research isnt your thing, youll at least get a strong CP education and know whats coming down the pipe in terms of molecular analyses in anatomic pathology: there are a number of molecular tests on paraffin embedded tissue currently offered for clinical use, and even more in development. This type of molecular and cytogenetic testing on surgpath specimens is going to be key for precise diagnoses during our practice lifetime. If you learn about it now, it wont be such a drag when youre 40 and in private practice and your gastroenterologists are asking you for help in interpreting the KRAS pyrosequencing. Thats my soapbox on that.
On all of the CP rotations the emphasis is on you functioning as a medical director, not learning how to perform testing. As part of that emphasis at UofUtah, once you have your medical license (sometime in the PGY2 year you will receive it) you can moonlight as an assistant medical director. Youll be paid and get some hands-on experience doing either administrative work, trouble-shooting, or sign-out. There are a few other moonlighting options available for path residents at UofUtah including editing ARUP Consult. Which segues into cost-of-living in Utah: your salary will go a long way.
Call: You start taking call in your first year, about 53 days total. CP and AP call are separate and about 50% of the time expect to be at the hospital late (past 19:00) for frozen sections on AP call. About 50% of the time on CP call youll get woken up in the middle of the night for a transfusion reaction, though all CP call is from home. PGY1s cover Thanksgiving and Christmas call, so after your first year, youll have those holidays free. You take progressively less call as you become more senior Ive had a string of months with only 2 4 weeknights of call. Weekend CP call is from home over the phone and AP call does involve coming in to gross on Saturday at the main hospital and Sunday at the Childrens hospital, which is a drag, but ultimately not too much work (usually home by 13:00 on both days). The PGY1s on autopsy alternate covering weekend autopsies, which are postponed to Monday whenever possible.
Fellowships: There are now Surgical Pathology, Pediatric Pathology, Cytopathology, Hematopathology, Medical Microbiology, Molecular Genetics and Clinical Chemistry fellowships at UofUtah. The Hematopathology and Molecular Genetics fellowships are stand-outs in their fields. If you dont want to stick around Utah for fellowship youll be in a great position to get one elsewhere. This years graduating class is going to Stanford for surgpath, Johns Hopkins for surgpath, and UofUtah from hemepath and cytopath. My class has already secured followships for hemepath at Stanford, hemepath at UofUtah, dermpath at Geisinger and cytopath at UofVermont. Recent residents have gone to Mayo for dermpath, Duke for dermpath, Iowa for cytopath, Michigan for hemepath, etc. Everyone now does a fellowship before going into the job market and the majority of former residents are in private practice.
Clearly, Im a UofUtah fan. I didnt write this to self-servingly drum up respect for the program - Ive already got my dream fellowship. I think the praise is well deserved by the faculty and the rest of the folks that contribute to resident training.
Like I said, if you have any questions, ask.
Im a PGY3 Pathology resident at the University of Utah. My wife and I did the couples match Pathology/Anesthesia. We interviewed at 15 excellent programs from east to west coast and ranked Utah #1 for the strength of training in both fields. Neither of us has any regrets.
If you want to know the details of rotations I can give you them, but the highlights are:
Autopsy With the exception of a surprisingly enjoyable month at the medical examiners office, you finish your autopsies in the first year, spread over 6 months. I got 53 autopsies, with 50 being the minimum for boards, pretty much perfect for me. Others have been less fortunate and had 70s.
AP/SurgPath The first week of the first year is overwhelming, but because of senior residents and 3-4 Pathology Assistants in the gross-room, I was able to leave by 6:30 or earlier most every night. You alternate grossing days with microscope days (you will see what you gross plus more) and dont have to go back in the gross room after a day at the scope. When you are a senior you have even fewer grossing days, more time at the scope and more ownership of cases. At Utah you will see rare and interesting cases. There are not many large hospitals in this region of the United States and people with unusual tumors and genetic conditions travel a long ways for medical care at the UofUtah. There is also a required 2-3 months of surgpath in a community practice group, which rounds things out. The one less than ideal situation in surgpath is weekend grossing. When you are on surgpath as a senior or a junior you come in every other Saturday morning to gross for about 5 hours. This was instituted because of the massive number of specimens the University ORs churn out into the wee hours Friday night. It was simply too much for the on-call resident to handle by themselves. So now, there is a PA, a surgpath resident and an on-call resident all grossing together Saturday morning until about 13:00. Teaching on the surgpath rotation is excellent. We have the prestigious old-guard faculty as well as a newer crop of subspecialized surgpath faculty. Surgical pathology offices are centralized and doors are open for you to show cases around.
CP: Id have to write a book to cover all the CP rotations you can do at UofUtah & Associated Regional and University Pathologists (ARUP, which is run by the pathology department of the University of Utah). Check out ARUPs web site: http://www.aruplab.com/ to just see all the tests we offer. Itd also serve you well, wherever you go for residency, to use the ARUP Consult website: http://www.arupconsult.com/index.html which covers vetted testing algorithms for different diseases. ARUP is on the bleeding edge of clinical test development and if you want to put in the time as a resident you could get some phenomenal research done without having to fight for funding. If research isnt your thing, youll at least get a strong CP education and know whats coming down the pipe in terms of molecular analyses in anatomic pathology: there are a number of molecular tests on paraffin embedded tissue currently offered for clinical use, and even more in development. This type of molecular and cytogenetic testing on surgpath specimens is going to be key for precise diagnoses during our practice lifetime. If you learn about it now, it wont be such a drag when youre 40 and in private practice and your gastroenterologists are asking you for help in interpreting the KRAS pyrosequencing. Thats my soapbox on that.
On all of the CP rotations the emphasis is on you functioning as a medical director, not learning how to perform testing. As part of that emphasis at UofUtah, once you have your medical license (sometime in the PGY2 year you will receive it) you can moonlight as an assistant medical director. Youll be paid and get some hands-on experience doing either administrative work, trouble-shooting, or sign-out. There are a few other moonlighting options available for path residents at UofUtah including editing ARUP Consult. Which segues into cost-of-living in Utah: your salary will go a long way.
Call: You start taking call in your first year, about 53 days total. CP and AP call are separate and about 50% of the time expect to be at the hospital late (past 19:00) for frozen sections on AP call. About 50% of the time on CP call youll get woken up in the middle of the night for a transfusion reaction, though all CP call is from home. PGY1s cover Thanksgiving and Christmas call, so after your first year, youll have those holidays free. You take progressively less call as you become more senior Ive had a string of months with only 2 4 weeknights of call. Weekend CP call is from home over the phone and AP call does involve coming in to gross on Saturday at the main hospital and Sunday at the Childrens hospital, which is a drag, but ultimately not too much work (usually home by 13:00 on both days). The PGY1s on autopsy alternate covering weekend autopsies, which are postponed to Monday whenever possible.
Fellowships: There are now Surgical Pathology, Pediatric Pathology, Cytopathology, Hematopathology, Medical Microbiology, Molecular Genetics and Clinical Chemistry fellowships at UofUtah. The Hematopathology and Molecular Genetics fellowships are stand-outs in their fields. If you dont want to stick around Utah for fellowship youll be in a great position to get one elsewhere. This years graduating class is going to Stanford for surgpath, Johns Hopkins for surgpath, and UofUtah from hemepath and cytopath. My class has already secured followships for hemepath at Stanford, hemepath at UofUtah, dermpath at Geisinger and cytopath at UofVermont. Recent residents have gone to Mayo for dermpath, Duke for dermpath, Iowa for cytopath, Michigan for hemepath, etc. Everyone now does a fellowship before going into the job market and the majority of former residents are in private practice.
Clearly, Im a UofUtah fan. I didnt write this to self-servingly drum up respect for the program - Ive already got my dream fellowship. I think the praise is well deserved by the faculty and the rest of the folks that contribute to resident training.
Like I said, if you have any questions, ask.
Is it because the ranking is underway for most of the candidates ..... totally understood your behavior, but trust me your program won't have any unfilled position except the straight CP one, so you don't necessary need to post this here.
