- Joined
- Aug 15, 2003
- Messages
- 28,059
- Reaction score
- 441
- Points
- 5,256
- Attending Physician
Received the following in PM by someone who did or has done pathology residency training at UCLA - posting here in full. As I posted in another thread, anyone who would like me to post a review of their program and they wish to remain anonymous is free to do so. Bear in mind I might edit if something is inflammatory or against TOS, of course.
UCLA's residency program consists of 20 PGY1-PGY4 and they typically take 4-6 new residents per year. Most residents do 30 months AP and 18 months CP. But there have been a number of AP only, and also a few 2 year AP followed by fellowship (Neuropath, hemepath). There have been CP only residents also but there have only been 1-2 in the last few years. The program is integrated AP CP for AP/CP residents, but there are almost twice as many AP months (30 vs. 18) so the first couple years are AP heavy.
Fellows outnumber the residents. There are only 4-6 residents finishing a year, so everyone pretty much stays at UCLA and does the fellowship they want.
These are the fellowships:
Surgical Pathology (5 spots)
Dermatopathology (3 spots, 1-2 spots go to internal path candidates every year and the other usually goes to a UCLA or other dermatology resident)
GI (2 spots)
Heme (2 spots)
Cytology (2 spots)
Microbiology (2 spots, usually done by PhDs)
Blood Banking (1 spot)
Cardiovascular (1 spot and one of only 2-3 in the country)
Bone and Soft Tissue (1 spot, UCLA has an incredible volume of sarcomas as there are a total three full-time ortho-onc and sarcoma surgeons who operate on nothing else)
Breast/Gyn (1 spot, commonly done by people who have also done cytology)
Molecular Path (not sure if this one is running yet but there was talk of it)
AP break down
Autopsy: 5 months total: 4 months in the hospital, 1 at the county coroner. Most all dissection is done by the techs and all you have to do is weigh and bread loaf the organs.
Cytology: 4 months total: 3 doing exfoliative cytology and reading radiological guided FNAs, and 1 month out doing your own FNAs and writing those up.
Surgical Pathology: UCLA is strict subspecialization and broken up along the lines of surgical and medical subspecialties. Attendings only sign-out 1-2 different areas of pathology (i.e. they only sign out Bone and Soft Tissue, or only ENT path, or maybe they sign out two disciplines such as GI and Liver). From a resident's point of view the rotations can be broken up into junior and senior services. The junior ones consists of 1 month rotations covering 1-2 different areas of subspecialty. Then they repeat them. For instance they spend a month covering two surgical subspecialties (ENT and Cardiothoracic) or one (bone and soft tissue) and then they repeat it at a later point. The combinations are based on workload. The senior rotations consist of being a gross room supervisor, a junior attending, and covering frozen sections.
Electives: 3 months. Very flexible, can do away rotations, research or whatever you want.
For CP:
Chemistry and Microbiology: 4 months of each and they are basically self-study with little structured time but plenty of resources and opportunity to get involved.
Blood Bank: 4 months with great teaching and structure that keeps you busy from 9 to 5.
Hemepath: 3 months bone marrow and 1 month lymphoma. Busy services with pretty good teaching
Molecular/Cytogenetics: 1 month
Elective: 1month of a CP elective
Upsides:
1) The volume and variety of material in surgical pathology is fantastic.
2)Subspecialization allows you to sign-out with an expert pathologist in that area every single day, and if you want a career in academics, it is a great place to go and start subspecializing while in residency.
3)The large number of fellowships versus the smaller pool of residents allows you to do whatever fellowship you want, and many people do two. Dermpath might be competitive for most pathology trainees, but if you go to UCLA, work hard, and be an all around good guy, it is pretty easy to get. The most common combos are Derm+GI, Surg Path+Derm, Cyto+GI, and Surg Path+GI, but I have seen pretty much all combinations.
Downsides:
1) 1) The subspecialization results in your spending as much or more time grossing and studying Bone and Soft Tissue than Breast specimens. When in the real world, breast pathology is much more prevalent.
2) 2) Subspecilization makes some of the surgpath services very tough in terms of hours and caseload. They were supposed to get a PA to help with this.
3) 3) Little structure for micro and chem is great when you are on those services but you pay for it later when you have try to learn everything for boards.
4) 4)Subspecialized sign-out is great for attendings, who can focus on mastering one or two areas of pathology, and great for patients, who then get expert pathologists for their surgeries and biopsies, and it is great for trainees who are going to go into academics, but for community practice types, general sign-out would probably be better.
Jobs: About 50% have gone into AP/CP community practice with 50% going into basic science, forensics, blood banking or AP academics. Most everyone stays in California and most community practice people I have known have gotten multiple offers from San Francisco to San Diego and everywhere in between. I know graduates that have turned down 8-10 job offers all over California, meaning they are getting their top pick. Other graduates who were restricted themselves to one small area of California (i.e. they restricted themselves to West LA or only San Diego or something like that) occasionally had a rougher time finding a good job. But the hard working residents with good fellowships get numerous job offers. The UCLA fellows that do their residency elsewhere also seem to have no problem landing jobs in California too.
Atmosphere: Research projects and academics are strongly encouraged but arent forced upon you. All in all the teaching is good and if you put effort into your services, it is hard to not learn a lot of pathology."
UCLA's residency program consists of 20 PGY1-PGY4 and they typically take 4-6 new residents per year. Most residents do 30 months AP and 18 months CP. But there have been a number of AP only, and also a few 2 year AP followed by fellowship (Neuropath, hemepath). There have been CP only residents also but there have only been 1-2 in the last few years. The program is integrated AP CP for AP/CP residents, but there are almost twice as many AP months (30 vs. 18) so the first couple years are AP heavy.
Fellows outnumber the residents. There are only 4-6 residents finishing a year, so everyone pretty much stays at UCLA and does the fellowship they want.
These are the fellowships:
Surgical Pathology (5 spots)
Dermatopathology (3 spots, 1-2 spots go to internal path candidates every year and the other usually goes to a UCLA or other dermatology resident)
GI (2 spots)
Heme (2 spots)
Cytology (2 spots)
Microbiology (2 spots, usually done by PhDs)
Blood Banking (1 spot)
Cardiovascular (1 spot and one of only 2-3 in the country)
Bone and Soft Tissue (1 spot, UCLA has an incredible volume of sarcomas as there are a total three full-time ortho-onc and sarcoma surgeons who operate on nothing else)
Breast/Gyn (1 spot, commonly done by people who have also done cytology)
Molecular Path (not sure if this one is running yet but there was talk of it)
AP break down
Autopsy: 5 months total: 4 months in the hospital, 1 at the county coroner. Most all dissection is done by the techs and all you have to do is weigh and bread loaf the organs.
Cytology: 4 months total: 3 doing exfoliative cytology and reading radiological guided FNAs, and 1 month out doing your own FNAs and writing those up.
Surgical Pathology: UCLA is strict subspecialization and broken up along the lines of surgical and medical subspecialties. Attendings only sign-out 1-2 different areas of pathology (i.e. they only sign out Bone and Soft Tissue, or only ENT path, or maybe they sign out two disciplines such as GI and Liver). From a resident's point of view the rotations can be broken up into junior and senior services. The junior ones consists of 1 month rotations covering 1-2 different areas of subspecialty. Then they repeat them. For instance they spend a month covering two surgical subspecialties (ENT and Cardiothoracic) or one (bone and soft tissue) and then they repeat it at a later point. The combinations are based on workload. The senior rotations consist of being a gross room supervisor, a junior attending, and covering frozen sections.
Electives: 3 months. Very flexible, can do away rotations, research or whatever you want.
For CP:
Chemistry and Microbiology: 4 months of each and they are basically self-study with little structured time but plenty of resources and opportunity to get involved.
Blood Bank: 4 months with great teaching and structure that keeps you busy from 9 to 5.
Hemepath: 3 months bone marrow and 1 month lymphoma. Busy services with pretty good teaching
Molecular/Cytogenetics: 1 month
Elective: 1month of a CP elective
Upsides:
1) The volume and variety of material in surgical pathology is fantastic.
2)Subspecialization allows you to sign-out with an expert pathologist in that area every single day, and if you want a career in academics, it is a great place to go and start subspecializing while in residency.
3)The large number of fellowships versus the smaller pool of residents allows you to do whatever fellowship you want, and many people do two. Dermpath might be competitive for most pathology trainees, but if you go to UCLA, work hard, and be an all around good guy, it is pretty easy to get. The most common combos are Derm+GI, Surg Path+Derm, Cyto+GI, and Surg Path+GI, but I have seen pretty much all combinations.
Downsides:
1) 1) The subspecialization results in your spending as much or more time grossing and studying Bone and Soft Tissue than Breast specimens. When in the real world, breast pathology is much more prevalent.
2) 2) Subspecilization makes some of the surgpath services very tough in terms of hours and caseload. They were supposed to get a PA to help with this.
3) 3) Little structure for micro and chem is great when you are on those services but you pay for it later when you have try to learn everything for boards.
4) 4)Subspecialized sign-out is great for attendings, who can focus on mastering one or two areas of pathology, and great for patients, who then get expert pathologists for their surgeries and biopsies, and it is great for trainees who are going to go into academics, but for community practice types, general sign-out would probably be better.
Jobs: About 50% have gone into AP/CP community practice with 50% going into basic science, forensics, blood banking or AP academics. Most everyone stays in California and most community practice people I have known have gotten multiple offers from San Francisco to San Diego and everywhere in between. I know graduates that have turned down 8-10 job offers all over California, meaning they are getting their top pick. Other graduates who were restricted themselves to one small area of California (i.e. they restricted themselves to West LA or only San Diego or something like that) occasionally had a rougher time finding a good job. But the hard working residents with good fellowships get numerous job offers. The UCLA fellows that do their residency elsewhere also seem to have no problem landing jobs in California too.
Atmosphere: Research projects and academics are strongly encouraged but arent forced upon you. All in all the teaching is good and if you put effort into your services, it is hard to not learn a lot of pathology."
