Complete List of Breast Pathology Fellowship Programs

[zao275]

Since we have been on the issue of breast pathology quite a bit lately, I thought this info would be timely:

A full list of all breast pathology fellowship programs in the USA are listed on the Pathology Resident Wiki:

http://pathinfo.wikia.com/wiki/Breast_Pathology_Fellowship_Directory

If you know of a program that is missing from the list, please add it to the wiki. Thanks!

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[pathstudent]

Thanks for posting that.

I checked them out and it raises an issue I have with the term "fellowship trained".

Some of those listed you don't even spend six months studying breast and split it with other rotations (typically gyn or electives). If you do 5 extra months of neuropath or cytopath or hemepath, are you fellowship trained in those areas? No. You are not. Why does that qualify as being a breast fellowship? Especially with what we just read in the NYT where people throw the term "breast pathologist" around and use it so divisively.

I should start a fellowship where you do one month GI, one month liver, one month renal, one month breast, one month lung, one month gu, one month soft tissue, one month gyn, one month bone, one month oral cavity, one month head and neck, and one month endocrine. And when you are done you can say you are a GI, liver, renal, breast, lung, gu, soft tissue, gyn, bone, oral cavity, head and neck and endocrine pathologist.

 

[zao275]

Thanks for posting that. I should start a fellowship where you do one month GI, one month liver, one month renal, one month breast, one month lung, one month gu, one month soft tissue, one month gyn, one month bone, one month oral cavity, one month head and neck, and one month endocrine. And when you are done you can say you are a GI, liver, renal, breast, lung, gu, soft tissue, gyn, bone, oral cavity, head and neck and endocrine pathologist.

Haha. But don't they call that a surg path fellowship?

Good point. I saw that some of the programs were not pure breast. However, if the program was listed as a "breast" fellowship by the institution, I included it in the list. Applicants can then decide for themselves if it is what they are looking for or not.

 

[KCShaw]

That's exactly the problem with non-accredited fellowships -- nobody really knows what they mean, and they're allowed to mislead clinicians and patients with the implication that they -are- standardized in some way. Among pathologists, the value of a non-accredited fellowship depends on the program it was at and/or the individuals one was trained by. Hardly anyone else knows enough about the system (or lack thereof) to be able to draw sensible conclusions.

We also know that some individuals simply proclaim themselves as cardiac pathologists or breast pathologists or whatever, because nothing says they can't, and they argue they must be since they've seen "a bunch" of it.

I'm not advocating accrediting all these different subspecialties, nor a CAP-like certification program -- but some element of control over who can or can't call themselves what actually -would- be useful to clinicians and patients who have no way of knowing our "system." Perhaps nobody should be able to call themselves a subspecialty pathologist unless there -is- a certification. Everyone else is just a board certified anatomic pathologist, and they can clarify their expertise by specifying what they've actually seen or done.