Pathology related questions

[Cica]

Ant female pathologist out there or do you know of any female pathologists who were expecting during their residency?
- Did the gross surgical pathology prep? If no when do u tell the dept. That u expecting?
- Did they work with senitel node frozens wit radioactive dye?
- did they do autopsies? If so jow do u make sure thye are not ones with infections?

Will appreciate honest replies regarding these questions.

Thanks in advance

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[KCShaw]

Can't understand all of your questions between the grammar and the typos. However, we had a few babies born while I was in residency. We expected the program to be told at least as soon as they felt the pregnancy was "safe" and had done the family thing, but as I recall ours were planned so we began considering what we would do ahead of time. There's a little paranoia about formalin but I haven't read the latest studies; if I remember correctly most of the concern was 1st trimester exposure, but don't quote me on that. As I recall we just tried to pack in grossing & autopsy rotations ahead of time and CP, electives, and non-grossing rotations once pregnant, with the least physical ones towards the last month or two. I think we did a mid-rotation switch for one of them right after she found out she was pregnant and voiced concerns about formalin(?). If you have good numbers of residents it's not too bad of a problem, since there's always a few people who need at least more surg/grossing months.

As for autopsy infectious exposures, every hospital case came with a summary and their records were expected to be screened by the resident prior to autopsy -- the main concern was still formalin, though I think we still had them avoid autopsy rotations anyway. It's been a while.

 

[LADoc00]

By and large from what I saw no one gives your crap your pregnant during training. You get the the by law maternity leave (dunno if this is Federal or by state) but that is it.

People give even less of crap when you are pregnant out in practice.

I personally never witnessed someone getting out of a task due to their pregnancy in Pathology (with some caveats, Ive known some bizarre locations which can put some M.D.s on light duty by law but not Path residency).

Again, from what I saw residents typically worked full steam until about a week or so before and then took the mandated 3-4 weeks off...dunno it might have been less for ABP purposes?

I would ask the program.

 

[Cica]

Hey

I am the only resident and a new one (they did not have a resident before me). Also, I am in Europe and here we do everything together (that is grossing, autopsies and histology). No CP. So we do not have any spec. rotations. I am suppsoed to do a cytology rotation for 6 months at the university hospital (not ours - its in a different city)so that is the only option!

 

[KCShaw]

(Basically all of this only applies to the U.S.) There's a separate thread around here about the time off issue. The bottom line is that while your annually renewed "job"/income is protected (until the end of the contract, almost always at the end of the academic year) the ?federal leave allocations have zero bearing on whether you have spent enough time on-site at your training program to be ABP eligible to take the boards. Being away on maternity/paternity leave does not count as being on-site in training. Somehow some people have a hard time grasping this concept.

 

[Cica]

Hey

I think there has been a misunderstanding, my biggest concern is formalin exposure or exposure to potentially infectious autopsies while expecting. I have heard mixed responses with regard to these 2 issues here in our system.

What I am asking is if anyone had to do gross work (have some exposure to formalin) and if they did autopies?

 

[KCShaw]

Formalin: I gather that while some attempts have been made to study this, none have reliably shown an effect in humans at exposure levels relevant to normal working conditions among those who work with it. Which I guess is where I got "paranoia" from -- a lot of fear but not much in the way of definitive evidence, as far as I know.

Collins, James J., Roberta Ness, Rochelle W. Tyl, Neil Krivanek, Nurtan A. Esmen, and Thomas A. Hall. “A Review of Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes and Formaldehyde Exposure in Human and Animal Studies.” Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 34, no. 1 (August 2001): 17–34. doi:10.1006/rtph.2001.1486.

For autopsy, especially a hospital autopsy, I'm not aware of an infectious risk to a pregnancy being significantly higher than for any other health care worker in other parts of the hospital, but I couldn't immediately find a study which addresses the point.