Home >> ALL ISSUES >> 2013 Issues >> From the President’s Desk: Inclusion woven into our fabric

From the President’s Desk: Inclusion woven into our fabric

image_pdfCreate PDF

Stanley J. Robboy, MD

July 2013—The CAP Residents Forum, a voice for pathology residents and an effective agent of change, will celebrate its 25th anniversary at CAP ’13. Forty-two residents attended the first CAP Residents Forum in October 1988. Last year, 218 delegates from 116 training programs came to the meeting, a remarkable fivefold increase.

A related statistic is even more remarkable: More than 90 percent of pathology residents in the United States and Canada are CAP junior members. (The junior member category is mostly residents—about 2,300 out of 2,900—but it also includes those in the first two years of fellowship or employment who have not yet passed their boards.)

We welcome our junior members with respect, mentorship, fellowship, education, and a dues waiver during residency that can be extended for up to two years. Since 1990, resident members have sat on nearly every CAP committee. Since 1996, the Residents Forum chair has been a voting member of our Board of Governors. These are gestures of inclusion and good faith—gifts that keep on giving. Junior members—energetic, bright, and ever eager to learn—enrich our lives and our specialty. Where we have offered opportunity, they have made the most of it.

The Residents Forum invites leaders of the American Board of Pathology and the Association of Pathology Chairs, and the APC’s program directors section (PRODS), to meet with them, building relationships within the greater pathology community. Through the Residents Forum, pathology residents created a standardized pathology fellowship application, available on the CAP Web site. They have debated the value of a fellowship match, sponsored speakers pro and con, and consulted their APC/PRODS mentors for guidance. The Residents Forum chair, Roseann I. Wu, MD, MPH, was invited to give a brief report at the summer APC/PRODS annual meeting. They have certainly learned leadership skills.

Richard E. Horowitz, MD, has for years pressed for more attention to leadership skills in pathology training. He and co-editors Elizabeth A. Wagar, MD, and Gene P. Siegal, MD, PhD, have written Laboratory Administration for Pathologists, a self-study curriculum for laboratory management constructed with those skills in mind. It is essential to make a perfect diagnosis, Dr. Horowitz likes to say; it is also essential to know how to communicate that diagnosis and how to use the laboratory to solve clinical problems.

A new physician who has been highly successful academically may find it takes more than scientific excellence to succeed in practice. Many of today’s CAP leaders attribute their career success to the “softer skills” they learned through the Residents Forum and, later, the College. This is where they forced themselves to network (and later, came to enjoy it). This is where they first reached out to mentors, took an unconventional position, and otherwise stepped outside their comfort zones. Whether through CAP committee service, participation in Laboratory Accreditation Program inspections, or long hours developing clinical guidelines, this is where they learned to work without losing their sense of fun. Which brings me to “Pathologists are Groovy.”

CAP TODAY
X