Curriculum

The combined anatomic and clinical pathology training program is a fully accredited four-year program, accepting 3 new residents each year.

First and second years of training

• The first 7 consecutive months of the first year are devoted to anatomic pathology, allowing residents to concentrate their educational experience on general surgical pathology.
  • Grossing of specimens
  • Frozen section evaluation
  • Microscopy/sign out
  • Autopsy pathology

• Remainder of the first and second year introduces some of the core disciplines of clinical pathology, including:
  • Hematopathology
  • Transfusion medicine
  • Clinical chemistry
  • Microbiology
  • Lymph node pathology
  • Flow cytometry
  • Molecular pathology
  • Laboratory administration
  • Informatics

Third and fourth years of training

• Mixture of anatomic and clinical pathology rotations, including
  • Subspecialty rotations (neuropathology, hepatic/renal/transplant pathology, electron microscopy, dermatopathology, pediatric pathology, molecular pathology, cytogenomics, and cytopathology)
  • Electives in anatomic pathology and clinical pathology (22 weeks of electives)

The anatomic pathology curriculum is supplemented by outside rotations at the Wayne County Medical Examiner's office for experience in forensic pathology, and a one-month concentrated rotation in pediatric pathology at Children's Hospital of Michigan.

Our training program offers numerous types of teaching sessions, all of which are protected learning time. Our various types of teaching sessions include:

Core didactic series

• Hour-long lectures held four days per week
• Monday and Tuesday lectures are dedicated to topics in anatomic pathology
• Wednesday and Thursday lectures are dedicated to topics in clinical pathology
• Anatomic pathology lectures are given in organ system blocks
• This series is given over a two-year cycle, allowing each resident to experience the entire series twice during their training, once as a junior resident and once as a senior resident

Weekly anatomic pathology conference

• The conference is attended by all anatomic pathology staff and residents and covers a variety of topics including:
  • Practice based learning and improvement conference
  • Gross diagnosis conferences
  • Journal club
  • Interesting case conferences

Weekly unknown slide conference

• The conference is attended by all anatomic pathology staff and residents
• Slides are reviewed by residents prior to conference
• Slides are projected and the cases are discussed including the microscopic description, differential diagnosis, ancillary studies that would be useful in the case work-up, etc.  

Weekly autopsy gross conference

• Gross autopsy findings or interesting autopsy microscopy are reviewed

Weekly brain cutting

• Brains from adult and fetal autopsies are sectioned and reviewed

Weekly clinical pathology conferences

• The conference involves staff, fellows, residents, and laboratory staff including call debriefing conference, unknown conference, case conference, integrative case conference, journal club, quality reports conference

Interdepartmental conferences

• A variety of conferences occur in conjunction with other disciplines including
  • Morbidity and mortality conference
  • Multidisciplinary tumor boards and teaching conferences

Lynn Marie Van Renterghem
Program manager
Phone: 248.898.4462
Email: Lynnmarie.Vanrenterghem@corewellhealth.org