Pathology Question

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OneStrongBro

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Hello I will be a PGY1 medicine resident in a community hospital in July. I was given one month to do an away elective. I have decided to do it in pathology.

Anyone have any suggestions on a "fun" location where I can do a pathology month as a PGY1?

Basically a fun city with a lot of pathology that I can learn.

I will be knee deep in ICU, CCU, and Wards for the upcoming year so I appreciate any advice.

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you are a med student right now, so i will go a little easy on you. however, i would be interested in what you think pathology residency is like. i am interpreting your post as saying: "hey all you lazy pathologists, where can i go to do one of your cake rotations, get a nice tan, and cruise out of the hospital by around noon? Oh, and please drop everything that you are doing to teach me so i can get credit." just so you know, i encourage clinicians to stop by to increase the interaction on the day to day business of taking care of patients and understand how pathology fits into the practice of different disciplines. a wise pathologist would say for all of us to "move out of the basement and get a fishtank." (shameless plug for you descutes) but you sound like a slacker. ok, so i am a little harsh, but that is just my sytle.
 
i'm with triguy on this one.

OSB, go to vegas, NYC, SF, etc. to do a path rotation. A lot of cities have pathology so just choose a city you like.

i hope you have to recut a lot of frozens on your rotation. :smuggrin:
 
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Sounds like you are more interested in the city than the path department, in which case you should just contact path departments in cities you are interested in. As a rotating non-pathology resident, your "job" is likely to consist of sitting in on signout and when not in sign out, reviewing study cases or looking at cases that are to be signed out, or whatever. I doubt they would have you doing any grossing or scutwork or anything. If you are serious about learning pathology, almost any large academic (or private) medical center should have sufficient volume and material to make for an interesting month. And once you are there, it will likely be a "you get out of it what you put into it" type of situation - i.e., no one is going to force you to do much of anything, but if you want to attend more signouts and see more cases people will likely help you get that experience.

Every path department probably handles visiting non-path residents differently, however, so I would contact them well in advance to try to see what their department offers and whether they would take you.

As said above though, if you are doing this rotation just to fill time, don't expect to many departments to be that enthusiastic about trying to squeeze you in.
 
Hello I will be a PGY1 medicine resident in a community hospital in July. I was given one month to do an away elective. I have decided to do it in pathology.

Anyone have any suggestions on a "fun" location where I can do a pathology month as a PGY1?

Basically a fun city with a lot of pathology that I can learn.

I will be knee deep in ICU, CCU, and Wards for the upcoming year so I appreciate any advice.

First of all, which area of Pathology are you wanting to learn? If you seriously want to get something out of your rotation, I would do a combination of Transfusion and Coagulation Medicine and Hematopathology. Surgical Pathology would not be very beneficial to you. Try to learn very well the criteria for blood component transfusion to minimize calls from us when you start ordering blood products. Learning coagulation would be very helpful too so that you'd know which tests are appropriate to order when working up bleeding or clotting patients. Hematopathology should be very helpful too because you would be able to better understand the management employed by your attendings on your patients if you knew the leukemias well (classification, cytogenetics, etc.).
 
i'm with triguy on this one.

OSB, go to vegas, NYC, SF, etc. to do a path rotation. A lot of cities have pathology so just choose a city you like.

i hope you have to recut a lot of frozens on your rotation. :smuggrin:

I had a good time on my rotations at MSKCC and UCSD, check those out. Only know of a ME rotation here in Vegas. No surg path that I am aware of.
 
If you seriously want to get something out of your rotation, I would do a combination of Transfusion and Coagulation Medicine and Hematopathology. Surgical Pathology would not be very beneficial to you. Try to learn very well the criteria for blood component transfusion to minimize calls from us when you start ordering blood products. Learning coagulation would be very helpful too so that you'd know which tests are appropriate to order when working up bleeding or clotting patients. Hematopathology should be very helpful too because you would be able to better understand the management employed by your attendings on your patients if you knew the leukemias well (classification, cytogenetics, etc.).

I cannot agree more, BigD. Surg Path will be an almost complete waste of time, but the O.P. will be dealing with transfusion and coagulation issues for the rest of your career, regardless of what field you go into (well, maybe not psychiatry...). Hell, if all you learn is how to do a solid interpretation of a peripheral blood smear, you will be one up on almost all of your peers. I've seen many medicine residents skewered by their attendings for failing to review the smear and check for schistocytes/blasts/what have you. Don't be that guy.
 
I think that if the OP has a strong interest in GI (like he is looking at GI for fellowship), then a surg path rotation would be somewhat beneficial, seeing as though we do see a fair number of GI biopsies.
 
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