UMDNJ - ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON MEDICAL SCHOOL
DEPARTMENT OF PATHOLOGY AND LABORATORY MEDICINE

Training Experience Requirements

 As required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), APCP-4 programs must include 18 months of formal education in AP and 18 months of formal education in CP.  The remaining 12 months may be a continuation of structured anatomic or clinical pathology education or may be devoted to a specialized area of pathology.

 The first two years of residency training contain a relatively increased proportion of anatomic pathology rotations, including surgical pathology and autopsy rotations.

The second two years of training contain increased amount of CP rotations with additional subspecialty training and elective time (see chart below). Training is always supervised by an attending pathologist with increasing responsibilities placed on the residents with increasing experience.  For example, residents on surgical pathology rotations should achieve a level of competence whereby they can: acquire clinical information, be able to prosect a complex surgical resection specimen, take  representative sections and recognize significant histologic patterns.  Residents should eventually be able to make histologic diagnoses and provide clinicians with therapeutic and prognostic information.  Rotations in CP include microbiology, immunopathology, blood banking/transfusion medicine, chemical pathology, hematology/hematopathology, coagulation, toxicology and medical microbiology.  Residents will be on call while on rotation, and will be available to provide consultation to clinicians with questions regarding laboratory testing.  Residents will also participate in clinical rounding with the patient care team, and be involved with laboratory management and quality assurance.

Scheduling Rotations:

Rotations are scheduled by the chief resident and program director with review and input from the residents, the rotation directors, and the Housestaff Committee.  In the spring, residents at  level PGY-2 and above are asked to prioritize needed and desired rotations for the coming year. Senior residents have priority in scheduling to facilitate completion of their training. 

Example of a typical resident experience

CALL:

Residents are assigned to call on a weekly basis. One week of call includes answering clinical pathology questions during the day and evenings, covering evening frozen sections and weekend autopsies.     

Conferences

 The following conferences are an important part of the curriculum.  Considerable effort is expended by the faculty in preparation for these conferences, and they are one of the best mechanisms for learning communication skills as well as the thought processes involved in making diagnoses.  Attendance at departmental conferences is monitored and expected unless service duties prevent it. Many conferences are accompanied by a short quiz, which allows the program director to monitor the residents’ acquisition of knowledge and improvement in diagnostic abilities.  Many of the conferences below require active participation by pathology residents, for example: surgical pathology case conference (weekly) involves the resident choosing an interesting case, taking photomicrographs and incorporating them into a power point presentation which includes discussion of the case, presentation of the differential diagnosis, and case summary with a literature review.  A similar format is used for the monthly autopsy conference.  Residents also present the pathology at the monthly mortality/morbidity conferences held in the departments of pediatrics, surgery and medicine).