Curriculum
Anatomic Pathology
Clinical Pathology
Electives
All pathology residents have three months of elective time, which should be done primarily at Cedars-Sinai. However, electives may be done at another institution if educationally appropriate and with the consent of the program director.
Residents may spend their elective months in any area of anatomic or clinical pathology, depending on their focus, or use this time for research activities.
Conferences
Resident conferences occur daily and include:
- AP/CP didactics
- AP/CP resident presentations (autopsy, cytology and clinical pathology)
- Journal clubs
- Unknown slides conferences
- CP review
In addition to the core conferences, residents routinely attend subspecialty conferences as they rotate through each subspecialty area, detailed in the rotation descriptions.
Teaching Oppourtunities
Interdepartmental teaching opportunities are abundant. Junior residents present their autopsy cases biweekly to the decedents’ clinical teams. Senior residents are the primary presenters at multidisciplinary general oncology tumor boards and present at subspecialty tumor boards.
While residents are on pathology rotations, they also have opportunities to teach staff from other disciplines — such as residents from internal medicine, pharmacy and podiatry, and fellows from hematology-oncology and rheumatology. Intradepartmental teaching occurs during several rotations.
Evaluations and Mentorship
The program director meets with each resident at least twice a year to review the resident's portfolio and help the resident create an individualized development and learning plan.
To ensure the resident is on track to meet all appropriate milestones, make considered career choices, and engage with local and national pathology organizations, portfolio review includes:
- Rotation and presentation evaluations
- Educational and research activities
- Quality assurance and patient-safety activities
- Curriculum vitae
In addition to the individualized development-plan meetings, group mentorship sessions are conducted throughout the year, including small group discussions that provide second-year residents an overview of the application process for fellowships, and question-and-answer forums between junior faculty members and residents.
Facilities
Cedars-Sinai is an 886-bed quaternary care facility with medical education as a core mission. The medical center has a Level 1 trauma center and a multi-organ transplant program, including heart, lung, liver, kidney, bone marrow and pancreas. There are many Centers of Excellence and institutes within Cedars-Sinai that provide outstanding anatomic and clinical pathology case material from patients of all ages. The medical library contains 11,000 volumes and 400 print and online subscriptions with library material also available from UCLA Medical Center.
The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine has a large subspecialized faculty committed to educating residents in all facets of pathology, with more than 50,000 surgical specimens, 8,500 cytology specimens, 2,300 fine needle aspirations, and over 5 million clinical laboratory tests annually. There are a grossing room and a spacious autopsy suite with leading-edge equipment. The clinical laboratories feature advanced instrumentation, such as front-end automation in the core and microbiology laboratories, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and 10-color flow cytometry. The departmental library boasts current editions of major general and subspecialty pathology textbooks, subscriptions to major pathology journals and subspecialty glass- and digitized-slide study sets. Residents are provided their own desk with a computer and microscope close to the faculty offices.
Have Questions or Need Help?
If you have questions or would like to learn more about the Anatomic and Clinical Pathology Residency Program at Cedars-Sinai, please call or send a message to Program Coordinator, Chau Nguyen.
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
8700 Beverly Blvd., Room 8709
Los Angeles, CA 90048-1804