Required General Rotations

* Advanced CP Coverage: Upper level residents will be expected to have an integrated clinical pathology experience (i.e., covering more than one section of the laboratory) with responsibilities simulating actual practice situations as much as possible. The working principle is that the advanced CP coverage resident should play the role of the attending pathologist covering the services. If the attending physician would be required to perform a task because of billing or physician level of consultation, then the senior resident would take that responsibility. One expception to this is the pheresis service. Residents will be required to credential by being involved in 5 episodes of pheresis, including one stem cell harvesting.

List of Elective Rotations

Renal Pathology
Occupational & Environmental Pathology
Eye Pathology
Research

Scholarly Activity

The residents are exposed to an environment, which values a scholarly approach to the problems of pathology and disease and are encouraged to participate in this through opportunities for teaching and clinical or basic research. Throughout the program each resident is required to be involved in scholarly activity within the department. Residents will serve as teaching assistants in laboratory sessions for medical students in the pathology course for second year medical students (PATH 200). Residents will summarize and present articles for Journal Club and will prepare presentations for the Resident Conference on a rotating basis. Each resident is strongly encouraged to pursue pathology practice and training intellectually, with curiosity and imagination, and, as appropriate, to submit manuscripts for publication during his/her residency training. This is considered a valuable learning experience and an important part of the residency program, regardless of the eventual practice setting for the individual resident. The work may be related to methods development, clinical or basic research, or reviews.

Evaluation of Residents

From the onset, the residents should identify strongly with the patient problems assigned, contribute to the extent that they are able and make appropriate corrections in their deficiencies. All of the programs will provide ample learning opportunities but consolidation and extension of the experience is the responsibility of the resident through intensive perusal of texts and, where appropriate, the literature. Evidence of continuing growth and maturation will be met with increasing independence and responsibility. A summary evaluation of each resident will be issued for record twice a year. The evaluation will be the result of periodic meetings of the program director with the pathology faculty to obtain a consensus view of the resident's performance in recent rotations. This consensus evaluation will then be discussed with the resident by the program director.
At this time, there will be an opportunity for clarification of issues, which have arisen and planning for the residents future. The result of this meeting will be a summary letter from the program director to the resident outlining the consensus evaluation by the faculty and the result of the discussion with the resident. The resident will be given the option of writing a response and will be asked to sign the letter as acknowledgment of its appropriateness.

Supervision

All cases to be signed out in all laboratories will have an attending physician who is responsible for the diagnosis. Individual residents may expect increasing levels of responsibility in the work-up and management of cases as they progress through their training. However, since residents progress at different rates, specific responsibilities at specific PGY levels are impossible to define. The level of responsibility given to a resident is therefore at the discretion of the designated attending. At no time, however, will a resident function without clear and readily available supervision.

Resident Advisor System

Each Resident selects a member of the faculty to serve as an advisor. The advisor should meet with the residents twice a year in scheduled meetings and should keep a record of the residents' performance as well as their concerns about the program, their long-term goals and expectations, and should be available to help the residents with any problems. Each resident would thus have direct contact with a (senior) faculty member who would know the resident well.