Start Residency on Monday

[bauber]

Any helpful words of wisdom?

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[mlw03]

If you don't know something, ask.

 

[MetroPath]

Any helpful words of wisdom?

Agree with the above. Dont do something if you are not sure, you can screw something up and feel the wrath of an attending. Learn as much as you can since you will be expected to know more and more each year.

 

[Silent Cool]

Any helpful words of wisdom?

Switch to a different specialty.

 

[jace's mom]

Read, read, read. As much as you can, whenever you can.

Good luck!

 

[pathstudent]

Try not to go in bitching about how the job market sucks because a widespread conspiracy of over training pathology residents so academic attendings can live a cush lifestyle.

 

[Mace1370]

I start Residency a week from tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. Did anyone read "The Practice of Surgical Pathology: A Beginner Guide to the Diagnostic Process" by Molavi before starting? Was it worth it?

 

[jp123ok]

I start Residency a week from tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. Did anyone read "The Practice of Surgical Pathology: A Beginner Guide to the Diagnostic Process" by Molavi before starting? Was it worth it?

I didn't discover this book until well after I started. It is excellent and well worth reading. I think that it will probably help you more if you read it after starting so that you have seen actual cases corresponding to what is described in the book.

 

[BU Pathology]

Any helpful words of wisdom?

It would be worthwhile to pay attention to the business and management aspects of your training. They typically do not have any impact on your day to day work of signing out cases, but they will become critical once you are out in practice. They also add to the diversity of your training, which will make it much easier to move into leadership positions if you wish. Having business and management skills does not require that you move in that direction, but it does open up possibilities.

Daniel Remick, M.D.
Chair and Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center

 

[MetroPath]

It would be worthwhile to pay attention to the business and management aspects of your training. They typically do not have any impact on your day to day work of signing out cases, but they will become critical once you are out in practice. They also add to the diversity of your training, which will make it much easier to move into leadership positions if you wish. Having business and management skills does not require that you move in that direction, but it does open up possibilities.

Daniel Remick, M.D.
Chair and Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center

I dont think I learned anything about the business side of pathology in residency, other than learning how to code my cases. Any other programs teach the business of pathology in residency.

 

[jp123ok]

I dont think I learned anything about the business side of pathology in residency, other than learning how to code my cases. Any other programs teach the business of pathology in residency.

Mine sure didn't 🙁.

 

[mlw03]

I start Residency a week from tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. Did anyone read "The Practice of Surgical Pathology: A Beginner Guide to the Diagnostic Process" by Molavi before starting? Was it worth it?

Yes and yes.

 

[Euchromatin]

I dont think I learned anything about the business side of pathology in residency, other than learning how to code my cases. Any other programs teach the business of pathology in residency.

We have had a couple of lectures on billing/reimbursement as part of our CP laboratory administration/management curriculum but not much else. The more commonly used codes were of course discussed during these lectures, but no on in our department assigns their own codes (I think our billing people do it).

 

[Perry Mason]

Any helpful words of wisdom?

I jotted this down a couple of years ago, hopefully you will find it somewhat useful:
Gross room survival guide for first year pathology residents
(not being self-promoting just trying to help)

 

[Mace1370]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

 

[icpshootyz]

I dont think I learned anything about the business side of pathology in residency, other than learning how to code my cases. Any other programs teach the business of pathology in residency.

Nope. Academic programs like to pretend medicine isn't a business. Therefore they teach you nothing about the business of medicine. Heck, they don't even like to let you know what the codes get charged or what any attending makes for salary. It's some taboo subject. And then you get out and have no idea if your salary is comparable to anyone else's or any other field's salaries. Fun.

 

[bauber]

I jotted this down a couple of years ago, hopefully you will find it somewhat useful:
Gross room survival guide for first year pathology residents
(not being self-promoting just trying to help)

Thank you!

 

[bauber]

.

 

[zao275]

This is mostly for AP, of course: Before trying to read all of Rosai, flip through the whole book and just look at the pictures. Building a huge mental library of images of various tumors and entities is very helpful. That way you will hopefully recognize a rare case when you stumble across one. You can always look it up and read the details about it at that point. But it's hard to look up an unknown tumor in a book based just on what it looks like if you have no idea what name to potentially give it. In the same vein, spend lots of time looking at recut study slide sets of rare and common cases.

For all residents: Get involved in the CAP Residents Forum (RF). You can volunteer to be a delegate for your program: residents.cap.org. But even if you aren't a delegate, anyone can attend the RF meetings held the Sat before CAP and Sat before USCAP each year. Being in the RF was so much fun, and it was a huge benefit to my career. It also indirectly resulted in my current job (I got to know Jennifer Hunt, my current department Chair who recruited me to UAMS, during my time as Chair of the Residents Forum).

And in general, from day 1, network, network, network. Attend as many meetings as you can, get to know everyone especially your local private practice pathologists, build relationships with everyone. Don't burn any bridges.

 

[member0007]

Any helpful words of wisdom?

Keep track of all your cases that you ever put your paws on.

Start reading like day 2.

My condolences to those starting their residency program at Mount Sinai Medical Center or Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

 

[jp123ok]

And in general, from day 1, network, network, network. Attend as many meetings as you can, get to know everyone especially your local private practice pathologists, build relationships with everyone. Don't burn any bridges.

Yes, this is great advice. Also, do electives at places where you might want to work after residency and impress everyone there by being friendly and hard working.

The most important advice for a newbie is to be humble. There is nothing more annoying than a first year who acts like they know everything.

 

[LADoc00]

I would second Dr. Remick on paying attention to the business aspect of Pathology but it is HIGHLY unlikely you will have any exposure whatsoever to this in your average program sadly. I didnt even know there was such things as CPT coding etc for literally years after beginning my journey.

One thing I have always thought of when I finally finished my training: Doing a broad high level overview of all Pathology via either the ASCP course or the Osler course would have been absolutely ace in my first or second year. I walked out of both thinking DAMN I wish I knew that like 4 years ago!

The blood bank guy Joe Chaffin has so many incredible tid bits it almost can be a religious experience.

You might not "get" everything the first time you attend something like an Osler but during your rotations stuff will start to click.

Not sure I would burn a ton of time doing CAP Boy Scout activities but would second the concept of finding a way to network and not being a wallflower that so many residents end up as.

 

[KCShaw]

Keep it simple, and realize that the first few months and most of the first year you aren't expected to know much -- you can go the wrong way and take the wrong kind of advantage of that and perpetually be behind, or you can go the right way and take advantage of being able to ask lots and lots of "stupid" questions without it really hurting you. Because 2nd year you're going to have to -answer- a lot of those questions to the newbies. Overall I can't much disagree with what's been offered...they just might not all suit you.

As for the business side of things, take advantage of any opportunities to learn about that. Unfortunately it's true that very, very few programs are going to be able to help you much with this. They might help prepare you for general lab administration, but not all of the business stuff. The medical staff largely may not know much of it themselves, and may bring in some hospital admin to lecture -- of course their perspective and background is likely to be drastically different to yours and I find there is not usually a good educational mesh there. This topic is one of the little advantages of having spent my first couple of years of residency with a private group, though I wasn't quite prepared to fully absorb that opportunity at the time (and they liked to be secretive about some details for their own reasons).

 

[yaah]

Pay attention to "peripheral" stuff. It's all important. Don't just focus on getting the "right" diagnosis - figure out why and learn patterns of immunostaining and trends like how often disease X is associated with condition Y. This sounds like it could get overwhelming but if you are paying attention a lot of it will just soak in.

This is most important in CP.

Most departments have a wealth of experts that would be happy to talk to you about various things like QA, CPT coding, computer systems, whatever. All you have to do is ask - it does take extra effort though.