Eric, I'm just joking here, but what would be the harm in adding a semester in med school to nothing but pathology instruction? One could argue that pathology is the queen of diagnosis and accurate diagnosis is at the center of medical practice!
It's a good idea and it is part of the curriculum of medical and veterinary schools. Med/vet students are usually exposed to at least a semester of histology/microanatomy, and they receive later training in pathology. There are some big differences in cytopathology vs histopathology. I'm not sure how much is still in human medicine programs as things have gotten more specialized, but in vet school most CVMs still provide one to several semesters of clinical pathology and cytology lectures and labs. Of course, these students are inundated with information overload during these years and don't retain many of the finer details, which have to be re-learned and reinforced for years after as part of continuing medical education (CME)
This was a fun post, as I don't have the opportunity to look at slides anymore. Used to do BV swabs and rarely gout aspirations, but the fast pace of primary care has left anything like this in the dust. I'm sure others will find practical benefit from this post, and I enjoyed the science and technique.
Thanks, Ryan! I agree—there’s so much that goes into what looks like a pretty low tech modality. And my impression is most ambulatory and outpatient facilities don’t do stuff like verify CBC results with a manual diff and smear review due to being busy +/- lack of training. That’s fine if you’re a large hospital with an attached lab and an expensive sysmex or Advia hematology analyzer, but the pathologist in me cringes when I see the local urgent care uncritically report results from the coulter counter 😬
Eric, I'm just joking here, but what would be the harm in adding a semester in med school to nothing but pathology instruction? One could argue that pathology is the queen of diagnosis and accurate diagnosis is at the center of medical practice!
It's a good idea and it is part of the curriculum of medical and veterinary schools. Med/vet students are usually exposed to at least a semester of histology/microanatomy, and they receive later training in pathology. There are some big differences in cytopathology vs histopathology. I'm not sure how much is still in human medicine programs as things have gotten more specialized, but in vet school most CVMs still provide one to several semesters of clinical pathology and cytology lectures and labs. Of course, these students are inundated with information overload during these years and don't retain many of the finer details, which have to be re-learned and reinforced for years after as part of continuing medical education (CME)
This was a fun post, as I don't have the opportunity to look at slides anymore. Used to do BV swabs and rarely gout aspirations, but the fast pace of primary care has left anything like this in the dust. I'm sure others will find practical benefit from this post, and I enjoyed the science and technique.
Thanks, Ryan! I agree—there’s so much that goes into what looks like a pretty low tech modality. And my impression is most ambulatory and outpatient facilities don’t do stuff like verify CBC results with a manual diff and smear review due to being busy +/- lack of training. That’s fine if you’re a large hospital with an attached lab and an expensive sysmex or Advia hematology analyzer, but the pathologist in me cringes when I see the local urgent care uncritically report results from the coulter counter 😬