ThinPrep - Are you certified?

[pathdoc68]

For those of you out there in practice that sign out ThinPrep paps. Are you certified by Hologic? Is it your impression that you need to be certified by the ThinPrep company to sign out ThinPrep paps. I mean, I do annual PT for Paps - but is there an additional actual legal requirement?

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[Path or bust]

For those of you out there in practice that sign out ThinPrep paps. Are you certified by Hologic? Is it your impression that you need to be certified by the ThinPrep company to sign out ThinPrep paps. I mean, I do annual PT for Paps - but is there an additional actual legal requirement?

CLIA only requires annual PT from approved entities, such as CAP.

 

[TMZ2007]

Our residency required us to get ThinPrep certified. We have a few non-cyto boarded faculty who sign out paps and they were required by the department to get certified (although these were not to fulfill legal/regulation requirements). It's a fairly straightforward program; if you actually watch all the videos and carefully examine the practice and exam slides, it should take maybe 5-6 hours. The exam cases that I saw were fairly obvious and they don't make you separate ASCUS from reactive, so you should easily pass.

 

[BamaAlum]

I think the "certification" for ThinPrep was meant more as a training tool for those pathologists who trained on and were more comfortable with conventional Pap smears. As stated above there is no regulation (ie no CAP checklist item or specific CLIA '88 requirement) requiring ThinPrep certification.

 

[mlw03]

I think the "certification" for ThinPrep was meant more as a training tool for those pathologists who trained on and were more comfortable with conventional Pap smears. As stated above there is no regulation (ie no CAP checklist item or specific CLIA '88 requirement) requiring ThinPrep certification.

I only saw a few conventional paps in residency, and thought they were much, much tougher to read than the liquid based methods in use now. Hard to imagine there are/were folks that found the conventional paps easier to interpret.

 

[BamaAlum]

I only saw a few conventional paps in residency, and thought they were much, much tougher to read than the liquid based methods in use now. Hard to imagine there are/were folks that found the conventional paps easier to interpret.

Never underestimate how much some pathologists dislike/resist change. I have heard several older pathologists (and one mid-career) say that they find conventionals easier due to the presence of diathesis and the geographic grouping of cells that can occur. That being said, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I only saw a handful of conventional Paps as a resident (although I did see quite a few as a cytopath fellow due to a long running NIH study) and LBC is infinitely easier to interpret. With time and experience I think most people agree.

 

[pathdoc68]

Thanks evreybody for the variety of opinions shared.