Clinical fellows rotating through pathology

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Enkidu

Full Member
10+ Year Member
15+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 5, 2008
Messages
616
Reaction score
2
Do clinical fellows rotate through pathology? Like gastroenterologists rotation through GI pathology and heme/onc rotating through hemepath? What are the expectations for these guys?

Members don't see this ad.
 
Some heme/onc programs have fellows spend a bit of time in hemepath, others not sure sure. We occasionally see residents/fellows from EM, surgery, or child abuse come through forensic pathology settings.

Expectations will vary with level of training and length of rotation. There is an expectation that one's clinical knowledge is at an appropriate level for their training.
 
At my institution, GI, uro, heme-onc, gyn, nephro and neurosx (I must be forgetting some) have to do 1-3 months of path. There's derm of course but the expectations are different for them.

Expectations for those fellows are quite low. They have to go through cases to have an idea and to understand the subtleties of a path report. The focus is on path-clinical correlations. They usually don't gross, don't order IHC by themselves, rarely dictate etc.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Maybe we should make the GI fellows gross colons.
Make the GYN docs gross the uterus.
Urologists gross prostates.

Put them to work. Help us with our workload

At my institution, GI, uro, heme-onc, gyn, nephro and neurosx (I must be forgetting some) have to do 1-3 months of path. There's derm of course but the expectations are different for them.

Expectations for those fellows are quite low. They have to go through cases to have an idea and to understand the subtleties of a path report. The focus is on path-clinical correlations. They usually don't gross, don't order IHC by themselves, rarely dictate etc.
 
Maybe we should make the GI fellows gross colons.
Make the GYN docs gross the uterus.
Urologists gross prostates.

Put them to work. Help us with our workload

Lol workload? I have yet to meet a pathologist who has too much of a workload (one that can collect the fruits of his labor anyway).

Teach them how to gross and you will lose all our business.

Better idea = learn how to scope as a path resident.
 
Lol workload? I have yet to meet a pathologist who has too much of a workload (one that can collect the fruits of his labor anyway).

Teach them how to gross and you will lose all our business.

Better idea = learn how to scope as a path resident.

You know, where I'm from they call pathology "path-holiday". God your field is screwy.
 
You know, where I'm from they call pathology "path-holiday". God your field is screwy.

I bet they didn't say that in their 2nd year of med school or when they were studying path/pathophys for step1. We should give them a written and slides exam at the end of their rotation that they must pass. We'll see if it's still a path holiday.
 
Do clinical fellows rotate through pathology? Like gastroenterologists rotation through GI pathology and heme/onc rotating through hemepath? What are the expectations for these guys?

I have seen quite a few clinical residents and fellows on various pathology rotations.

Forensics - required rotation for EM residents at some of the local programs, they did the same work that all of the other rotators did (although the path residents would generally end up teaching the other residents and/or med students how to perform dissections, identify gross findings, etc. at the beginning of the month). I think family med residents would come through occasionally too.
Chemistry - we get some sort of PhD toxicology/poison something-or-other fellows that come through periodically for a couple of weeks, no idea what they're up to, but they seem to be there most of the day and keeping busy
Micro - ID fellows and and IM residents on the ID service (I think the fellows do a month long rotation and residents will get tours of the lab + causal lectures from the technical director occasionally)
Hemepath - heme/onc fellows
Surg path - fellows from various subspecialty areas (i.e. breast surgery fellow will look at breast cases, peds GI fellows rotate on peds path, etc.); also a lot of radiology residents or residents doing a transitional year will rotate through for a month.

Most of the rotators are expected to do very little work in my experience. They come to any relevant conferences/lectures and typically only look at cases while the path residents and attendings are signing out together at the multi-headed scope. If they stay around the department and we can find them, we'll take the rads/TY/whatever residents that are on a generic surg path rotation with us when we go on frozens, have autopsies or are grossing something interesting.

The dean of the new Oakland University William Beaumont medical school associated with our hospital system is a pathologist (and ophthalmologist), so the medical students are going to have a required month-long "diagnostic medicine" rotation in rads and path. I believe it will be a mix of the two for the entire month, not two weeks/two weeks and it sounds like they are trying NOT to make it a total holiday month by giving them a bunch of assignments and quizzes, making them go to rads and path lectures, etc. It will be interesting to see how that works out when the first crop of 3rd year students come through this fall.
 
Underrated. I believe there is some line or two somewhere in most of the other specialties that says something about having to learn something about pathology, but mostly that is addressed in ways other than a pathology rotation -- like, showing up to a conference where path is presented at some point. We had vanishingly few clinical resident rotators. All the ones I can think of were from neurosurgery, and they just tagged around with the neuropath(s) a bit. Rumor had it that this used to be common practice across numerous specialties, and quietly disappeared along with off-site rotations, etc. in many places -- seems primarily related to money and labor issues.
 
Top