Pathology Elective
Today is the last day of my pathology rotation and it has been an amazing experience. Although I was unsure about pathology, I have learned a lot from seeing the "behind the scenes" look at what happens to diagnose various cancers and ailments from a more scientific approach. Pathology is an awesome elective that I would recommend to any student interested in seeing a discipline focused on seeing a patient from the macro-to the microscopic level.
One of the most valuable lessons I think I have learned from this rotation is find out what your pathologist(s) in your hospital need to make their job easier (which in turn helps you be able to help the patient). ObGyn's send many different types of specimens to pathology to evaluate for cancers. I have seen more slides of endometrium and breast samples than I ever expected thanks to this rotation. However, I never considered how to determine if a sample collected is adequate; or whether there will be benefit to the patient to send over collected samples. This is somewhat hard for me to put into words, but basically you can send whatever you want to from a pathologist but it would be wiser to think about how what you send could alter your clinical approach to the patient's care management. I definitely look forward to learning this and more in residency for sure.
The schedule has been very nice to me, and I have enjoyed it very much. Typically, the day is from 8:30 - 3:00 PM with the morning dedicated to reviewing slides prepared from the material the day before, helping stain slides in the lab, and reading about the pathologies on the slides presented to you. In the afternoon, you help with "grossing" which is the study of the gross pathologies and preparing specimen samples from what is brought to the pathology department from inpatient and outpatient sampling. For example, that colonoscopy you had to get last week might have resulted in two polyps removed. Those polyps will be sent to pathology for analysis to see histologically if there are any signs of cancer, and if so the extent it seems to be in the sample. I think pathology is one of the under-appreciated specialties that really are essential to our ability to practice medicine. The nice thing about pathology, aside from extra family time thanks to a light schedule, is being able to read in-depth about topics because I genuinely find them interesting. When an endometrial sample was presented to me today, I enjoyed asking for the pathology textbook (yet again) so I could re-read what the subtle differences are between complex hyperplasia and endometroid carcinoma...and even still it looks like I will be leaving that bit up to the pathologists in the future!
My next rotation is an away elective in Chicago. I am excited to see another hospital system, and learn about breast surgery. I will miss my family, but I am sure the four weeks will fly by as these rotations usually do. I recently finalized my schedule with my school, and it looks like I will be finishing up rotations by December! Crazy to think August 2015 is when I started, and I will be finishing on-time in December 2018...which seems to be the exception for a Caribbean medical school and not the rule. I have watched some of my peers veer onto a different timeline for this reason or that, and I am going to keep soldiering through. Fourth year really is a great year as rumored, albeit probably not as "carefree" and "relaxed" as was advertised by upper-semester peers because of the residency application process looming over your shoulders. Alrighty, it's about time for me to go review slides with my preceptor. Have a fantastic day, and until next time!