Pathology as a core elective?

[Ypo.]

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How useful would it be for an aspiring primary care doc to do a path rotation in their 4th yr? Just to clarify, I did read all of Robbins and enjoyed it.

This might be a stupid question, but what were your fourth year pathology rotations like? What did you learn, what were you exposed to, and how do you think that knowledge would help a doctor not planning on going into path?

Thanks. 🙂

 

[pathdoc68]

How useful would it be for an aspiring primary care doc to do a path rotation in their 4th yr? Just to clarify, I did read all of Robbins and enjoyed it.

This might be a stupid question, but what were your fourth year pathology rotations like? What did you learn, what were you exposed to, and how do you think that knowledge would help a doctor not planning on going into path?

Thanks. 🙂

If you are heading to primary care, I think there are more useful educational experiences for you. But if it interests you--- go for it, it is your last chance to indulge your interests. You will learn a little about gyn path - paps, HPV etc. If your program has good CP you will learn a little about lab test selection and evaluation. (good for diabetes, renal pts, hyperlipidemia, autoimmune dz. etc.) You can also learn a little coag and transfusion which you'll use as an intern. If you like you'll get to see a few autopsies as well.

 

[djmd]

How useful would it be for an aspiring primary care doc to do a path rotation in their 4th yr? Just to clarify, I did read all of Robbins and enjoyed it.

This might be a stupid question, but what were your fourth year pathology rotations like? What did you learn, what were you exposed to, and how do you think that knowledge would help a doctor not planning on going into path?

Thanks. 🙂

For a primary care doc, not vitally useful, but then rotations outside of your match area are good for:
A) Learning about a field that you might interact with (so you know what they do)

B) Spending time doing something that interests you that you will not get to see later..

So B), go a head and do it..
I did a 4th year Gas rotation, just I could learn intubation...

 

[Ypo.]

If you are heading to primary care, I think there are more useful educational experiences for you. But if it interests you--- go for it, it is your last chance to indulge your interests. You will learn a little about gyn path - paps, HPV etc. If your program has good CP you will learn a little about lab test selection and evaluation. (good for diabetes, renal pts, hyperlipidemia, autoimmune dz. etc.) You can also learn a little coag and transfusion which you'll use as an intern. If you like you'll get to see a few autopsies as well.

I would love to learn about those things. Most people have looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted to rotate in path, but my sneaking suspicion is that it would give me an edge over people who don't understand what tests are for/ how long they take to come back/ sensitivity/specificity (hard to understand if you don't understand how the test works)/ knowing shortcomings of the test (easily contaminated, misread, etc). All this year I keep being drawn to the hospital lab because I have questions about how they run the tests, but I didn't want to be annoying and randomly walking around the lab.

I think I need to talk to the clerkship director.

Thanks.

 

[yaah]

I think it would benefit everyone to have more exposure to pathology aside from the virtual slides and lectures in M2 year (since few people use microscopes anymore in MS2). At the very least you learn the process from specimen procurement to diagnosis, and see the stages and challenges that go into it. A lot of people just consider pathology a black box where material goes in, diagnosis comes out. And there are lots of unrealistic expectations as a result (thinking that a tiny biopsy is always adequate or representative, thinking that you can get results immediately, etc).

I did a year of path before returning to MS3 and it surprised me how much my random path knowledge helped.

 

[deschutes]

The med school here has a lab medicine/pathology course for M4s not going into path. I think it's fantastic: I got to sit in for the cytogenetics/molecular portion of the lectures and the students were asking good questions.

All physicians no matter the specialty depend on hospital laboratory results, so knowing how a hospital lab works is vital.

I don't know how long you have, but you seem motivated and I think you could gain a great deal if you made a list of the things that you wanted to see (pathdoc68's post has good suggestions) and spent a few days in each subdivision of the hospital labs watching specimens (ranging from blood tubes to body fluids, from skin shaves to large surgical resections) getting processed and resulted. It'll help you understand why lab systems have cut-off times, the measures to prevent specimen mix-up and which specimens are priority vs. routine.

I don't know how you'd be evaluated though, because a lot of this would be observational 🙂

 

[yaah]

A lot of evaluations for path electives simply depend on whether you show up and how you participate in the daily or however often they are small group sessions. In addition, many programs have you do a small talk on an area of interest, or on an interesting case you saw.