pathology shadowing

[prmdbeach17]

So I finally got a pathologist to email me back to shadow him this summer!! I'm pretty excited because right now I'm pretty interested in pathology after taking histo this spring. I was wondering what to expect since it's not like shadowing a regular doctor and seeing patients. To anyone that's shadowed a pathologist before or has any idea about a pathologist's day, what do you get to do? Look at specimens with them? And..what should I wear?

p.s. I'm a girl..omg I typed gilr a la that poster w/ the whole "non science majors shouldn't be accepted to med school" thread for anyone that's familiar..but I realized my mistake😉

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[NekoMD]

So I finally got a pathologist to email me back to shadow him this summer!! I'm pretty excited because right now I'm pretty interested in pathology after taking histo this spring. I was wondering what to expect since it's not like shadowing a regular doctor and seeing patients. To anyone that's shadowed a pathologist before or has any idea about a pathologist's day, what do you get to do? Look at specimens with them? And..what should I wear?

p.s. I'm a girl..omg I typed gilr a la that poster w/ the whole "non science majors shouldn't be accepted to med school" thread for anyone that's familiar..but I realized my mistake😉

Is is a pathologist in a hospital or an independent lab? I work as a tech in a hospital pathology lab, and we have separate people for dissection and slide review. The pathologists mainly look at slide, but they also go up and do frozen sections, where they look at a raw specimen and make a slide while the patient is still on the table (so that doctors can know what type of the mass/tumor they're dealing with).

Best guess? You spend lots of time looking at slides with a pathologist, maybe get to tag along as they do other stuff. I wear scrubs to work, and I've seen all the pathologists wear them too. Scrubs are a safe bet, but in a non-hospital setting I'd bring a pair of slacks/nice shirt just in case. You could always ask the pathologist...

 

[HreComesTheSun]

yes it depends on where your pathologist works and what he/she does, but for heavens sake don't show up in scrubs...the pathologist won't have surg path every day, and even if you need scrubs they will be available at the hospital. nice pants/top should do, and you'll find that if you're in the lab setting most of the time it can be even more casual than that.

i would think that you will get to observe surg path and look at cases together...Gut Shot could advise you most accurately

 

[Long Dong]

I did a summer of path research between first and second year of med school. I wore scrubs everyday, cuz the guy I worked with was head of autopsy, I was helping out with at least 1 autopsy a day. I noticed that most of the attending pathologist wore shirts and ties, and spent most of the day in their office reading slides and having other services consult with them. All of the residents wore scrubs though and would spend their time doing different things from grossing out specimens, reading slides and looking things up stuff on the net or at the libary. So it all depends on what type of pathologist you'll be shadowing you can dress ether way or well be doing any number of different things from getting your hands dirty (the residents made me run the bowels during autopsy) to just sitting in the office reading slides.

 

[Gut Shot]

As if on cue...

To echo what was mentioned above, your experience will depend on the pathologist's work environment. There is the anatomic pathology side, which is the bread and butter of most pratices. It's mainly surgical pathology and cytology, so you'll likely be spending time on the microscope looking at cases. If you can identify the organ you'll be in good shape. In some practices the pathologists gross (i.e. process) the surgical specimens, in others that work is done by skilled technicians. You may spend some time in the grossing bay observing how tissue is dealt with. Much of it is repetitive (skin shaves, gallbladders, etc.), so hopefully some more interesting stuff will drift through (colectomies, Whipples, laryngectomies, hemicorporectomies, etc.). Much like eating sushi, it will help if you set aside your disgust to see just how awesome this stuff is.

If the pathologist is doing cytology, you may get to accompany him/her for FNAs (fine needle aspirations). You'll go to patients and aspirate small quanities of their tumors/masses for identification. Yes, pathologists actually see patients sometimes.

On a related note, if your pathologist is into hematopathology, you'll be seeing wall-to-wall blood. There will probably be some bone marrow biopsies, and you may get to accompany him/her on acquiring a marrow biopsy.

If you're really lucky, there will be an autopsy. Should the opportunity arise to see one, jump on it. Make sure you eat something beforehand, don't lock your knees, and if you feel faint just leave the room. Almost everyone has a fainting response to gore at some point. There's no shame in it.

Also bear in mind that pathologists run the hospital laboratories, which include clinical chemistry and microbiology. You may get tours of those areas, so don't look surprised. The blood bank is also run by pathology. Think blood banks are just ABO pos/neg? Ha ha, think again. Transfusion medicine is one of the most skull-busting areas of pathology practice.

My best advice it to just be enthusiastic. The sheer number of things that can go wrong in the human body is staggering, and teasing them apart is pretty damned cool. Be the ball.

Some resources for you perusal:
The College of American Pathologists
The United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology
The American Society for Clinical Pathology
The American Association for Clinical Chemistry
The American Society for Microbiology
The American Society of Hematology
The American Association of Blood Banks (Not actually called this anymore. The term "blood bank" is out of vogue.)

 

[HreComesTheSun]

I did a summer of path research between first and second year of med school. I wore scrubs everyday, cuz the guy I worked with was head of autopsy, I was helping out with at least 1 autopsy a day...the residents made me run the bowels during autopsy...

this sounds more like hospital volunteer work than path research or shadowing a pathologist...did you end up using the specimens for a study or something?

 

[Long Dong]

this sounds more like hospital volunteer work than path research or shadowing a pathologist...did you end up using the specimens for a study or something?

Yeah used them for a study, got a poster presentation out of it and had a stipend. I was treated more like a resident on autopsy service and assisted the resident on the autopsy, but opening up the bowel from small intestine to colon looking for lesions/pathology was the dirty job that usually goes to the one on the bottom of the totum pole (which is always the med student).

It was a great learning experience though, and I was pretty sure I wanted to go into pathology after that.

 

[prmdbeach17]

He's a pathologist at a Children's hospital..thanks so much for all the info, Gun Shot and everone else!! Sounds like it'll be a really cool experience. I loved histology and did well in it so hopefully I can understand a bit of what they're talking about or at least what different organs/tissues look like. I was definitely not going to show up in scrubs🙄 And in my current health issues class we got to see dissected bodies, one with colon cancer, one with osteoporosis, one with an aneurysm that had burst, and one heart we got to hold had a pacemaker..and aside from the smell, I was okay so I would jump at the chance to see an autopsy if it came along...

Thanks for the links, too😎

 

[Gut Shot]

He's a pathologist at a Children's hospital..t

Then you're probably going to encounter one of the "bookends" of pathology personality. More likely, he's going to be super chill and laid back, totally amicable, a very swell dude. There is a minority chance, however, that he's a total douche.

As my brother put it, "if you want to make any doctor an dingus, just put the word 'pediatric' before his specialty title."