December 2023—The clinical laboratory at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is solving two problems at once: its phlebotomist staffing shortage and the need for some in its community to learn a new skill and obtain employment.
Read More »ABPath’s plans for transparency, competency pilot
June 2023—Three initiatives are underway at the American Board of Pathology, one of which its CEO Gary Procop, MD, MS, describes as “a new era of transparency and collaboration.”
Read More »Newsbytes
April 2023—At the medical center of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, patients are not screened for bladder cancer using urine cytology because the pathology department does not have the capability for such screening. But that may soon change, thanks to an organization focused on using digital pathology to increase the availability of pathology education resources in developing countries.
Read More »Looking for lab staff here, there, and overseas
August 2022—Higher wages help to fill open positions, when they can be offered, but in a labor market that’s as tight as ever, they’re often just a start. That’s why many laboratories are casting wider nets, though the hiring solutions tend to be long term.
Read More »Transgender care, in and beyond the lab
July 2022—Gabrielle Winston-McPherson, PhD, could be talking about almost any aspect of laboratory medicine as she recounts how the Henry Ford Health chemistry division, in which she is associate director, has identified a patient care need. She talks about the desire to improve health outcomes. Identifying problems in the preanalytical process. Appropriate test utilization. Putting together a team to develop training material. Assembling data and information prior to implementation. Informatics challenges. And, naturally, the perpetual financial concern of ensuring allocation of limited resources. How else would she—or any other laboratory professional—talk about the lab’s role in transgender health care? In fact, there are many other ways to discuss the topic. “It’s been in the news a lot these days, obviously,” says Matthew Krasowski, MD, PhD, clinical professor and vice chair, clinical pathology and laboratory services, University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. In fact, there are many other ways to discuss the topic.
Read More »The post-sophomore fellowship and other pieces of the pipeline
June 2022—Jobs in pathology are plentiful and positions are hard to fill, which has put the pipeline in the limelight. CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle led a virtual discussion with two pathologists and a pathology resident.
Read More »At Penn State, a fast track to pathology residency
March 2022—A new program called Pathology Accelerated Pathway at Penn State shepherds pathology-bound students toward residency readiness in three years instead of four and is set to begin this spring.
Read More »After the switch: high-sensitivity troponin
February 2022—Like growing old gracefully, moving to high-sensitivity cardiac troponin is both easier and more complex than it often appears. Stacy Beal, MD, thought clinical colleagues might be intimidated by switching assays. Dr. Beal was fully prepared to field worries about increased admissions, more consults, and other disaster scenarios. Instead, what surprised Dr. Beal, a member of the CAP Quality Practices Committee, was the ease with which some thought change could occur. “We heard people saying, ‘Just move the decimal point over two spots,’” she recalls. “I think we started hearing that from the day we started talking about it.” Could simply moving the decimal work? As Dr. Beal notes, “It’s hard to argue with that method, but we truly tried to tell them not to—that they needed to interpret this in a totally different way, and to view the different units as a new assay that’s very different from our previous assay.” “Maybe it’s our own fault,” Dr. Beal concedes. When the lab presented its correlation data, the new units were presented on one axis, while the old ones appeared on another.
Read More »Surgical Pathology Review: easing the transitions
February 2021—New from CAP Publications is Surgical Pathology Review, by Daniel D. Mais, MD, associate professor of pathology, Department of Pathology, University of Texas Long School of Medicine, San Antonio. He and 14 other contributors wrote this book to ease the transition through board exams and into practice, Dr. Mais writes in the preface. Here is what he told CAP TODAY about the book.
Read More »Cytopathology in focus: Virtual education in cytology: pandemic silver lining
January 2021—Although the challenges we face due to the COVID-19 pandemic are significant, adapting to our new circumstances can be a driver for positive change. Cytology education had started using virtual learning resources in the past few years with great variation among institutions and countries. The pandemic forced the community to embrace virtual learning in a variety of modalities. These changes may lead to lasting improvements in the quality and accessibility of educational opportunities for cytology trainees, and not just in the United States. In the same way, we are witnessing the exponential growth of digital pathology as applied to surgical pathology. In cytopathology the applications have been limited to telecytopathology in the setting of rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE) for interventional procedures. The difficulties in dealing with multilayered focus have been given as reasons not to pursue whole slide imaging for cytology. As the cytology community has, even if reluctantly, gained experience with remote sign-out, we may see a push for digital imaging for primary diagnosis in cytology.
Read More »At UW, anatomic pathology rotation moves online
July—When COVID-19 set in, much of residency education in the U.S. moved online. At the University of Washington School of Medicine, anatomic pathology faculty took online learning a step further by creating a virtual two-week anatomic pathology rotation for medical students. The faculty is aiming for a four-week virtual rotation inclusive of more laboratory medicine, to be used even after the pandemic has passed.
Read More »Student fellowship’s pluses seen in the field and out
April 2020—At Oregon Health and Science University, one of the oldest post-sophomore fellowship programs in pathology is recruiting steadily and channeling a quarter to a half of its student fellows into pathology residencies. Dating back to the 1920s, the OHSU Pathology Student Fellowship, as it is now known, starts recruiting at the end of the first year of medical school, says Nicole Andeen, MD, assistant professor of pathology and co-director of the program. “Medical students join after the preclinical curriculum or after a year in clinical rotations.” With former student fellows spreading the word, “recruitment happens naturally,” she says.
Read More »Too few technologists: labs take inventive steps
April 2019—The tight supply of technologists to fill open positions is pushing laboratories to be creative in finding answers. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and TriCore Reference Laboratories found their answers by looking not just outward but also—and largely—inward.
Read More »Not a fan of training new hires? Lab finds a fix
February 2019—When Tania Hong, BS, MT, joined the University of Vermont Medical Center five years ago, as network director of operations for pathology and laboratory medicine, she interviewed all of the supervisors in her laboratory. She asked what they saw as their biggest challenges.
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