Discovering Pathology Early

Nancy Johnson
0:00

Welcome to Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Nancy Johnson. It's Monday, August 24th. What if more medical students knew about pathology? You'll meet one resident who opened that door to the specialty for her classmates. Then we'll preview a few of the stories we're reporting this week with expert insights from CAP members.

Nancy Johnson
0:24

But first, in today's story, for many medical students, pathology isn't even on the radar. But a medical student at Louisiana State University saw an opportunity to change that. By reviving a pathology student interest group, she helped introduce classmates to a specialty they might never have even considered while building skills that prepared her for residency. Dr. Elizabeth Bozner's interest in pathology started early.

Dr. Elizabeth Bozner
0:53

I always loved science, so I was kind of leaning towards the medical field early on. And I really love art too, so pathology is a very visual field. So that kind of suited both of my interests growing up.

Nancy Johnson
1:09

By the time she arrived at Louisiana State University School of Medicine, Dr. Bozner already understood what pathologists do. It's in her blood. Her father is a pathologist, but she quickly realized many of her classmates didn't.

Dr. Elizabeth Bozner
1:24

Coming in, I had a pretty good idea of what pathology was, thanks to my dad, and having shadowed him too, like before coming to med school. But I also realized that many of my peers maybe didn't know what pathology was. It's not necessarily something we're exposed to in medical school, and it's not a required rotation as part of the clinical years.

Nancy Johnson
1:48

Dr. Bozner remembers the moment she first realized there was a need for a pathology interest group.

Dr. Elizabeth Bozner
1:55

One of the first few weeks of medical school, uh, we had like an interest groups uh session where students could sign up and um become members of all these different subspecialty medical sub-specialty interest groups, and that's where I realized oh, pathology was missing. So that's where that started. And I reached out to the previous uh faculty sponsor from when that group existed. I found the old website, I reached out to the pathologist, um, and we started it back up again.

Nancy Johnson
2:30

The pathology interest groups held virtual slide sessions and students sat in on morning sign-outs similar to rounds in internal medicine.

Dr. Elizabeth Bozner
2:39

We had people saying, Oh, I'm I want to apply for pathology for residency, and they were asking me for tips about how to get involved with um more hands-on exposure that would look good for um applying to pathology residency programs. Um so I was able to arrange things like um grossing shadowing for students, and we also started sign-up sheets for things like if there's an autopsy that you want to see and you want to shadow an autopsy, if you've never seen one, you can sign up and um get paired with a resident.

Nancy Johnson
3:15

For Bozner, the experience eased her transition from medical student to pathology resident at Tulane.

Dr. Elizabeth Bozner
3:22

I was able to be in that the actual lab and come into the gross room and kind of watch the residents to see what they were doing, um, not just during the sign out sessions, but also the afternoon, because in residency at large, part of what we do on surgical pathology is grossing. So I got to just help out there and be a little more hands-on. So that wasn't so much of a shock coming in as a resident because I had already experienced that.

Nancy Johnson
3:53

For medical students curious about pathology, the CAP offers tools to help interest groups get off the ground from educational materials and webinars to career resources and connections with practicing pathologists. Also, the CAP Foundation offers a sparking interest in pathology award of up to $500 to help students establish new interest groups or fund hands-on campus initiatives and speaker events.

Nancy Johnson
4:22

Here are other stories the team is working on this week. New CAP proficiency testing programs are helping laboratories strengthen quality and confidence in their results. We'll highlight several new offerings and talk with the experts behind them. Federal, state, and local policies can have a major impact on pathology practice. We'll preview an upcoming webinar that shows how pathologists can move beyond the microscope and become effective advocates for the profession. 8,500 laboratories, 50 years of advancing quality. We'll explore how CAP accreditation has helped labs reduce risk, improve performance, and strengthen confidence in patient results.

Nancy Johnson
5:10

That does it for the daily edition. Share this newscast with your social media network. And if you're watching this video on YouTube, hit the like button and leave us a comment. And if you've got a story we should be covering, write to us at stories at CAP.org. We're back tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Nancy Johnson. Have a great day!