Daily Duties and Responsibilities

Based on their level of training, residents are provided increasing autonomy with close faculty supervision. The residents should preview all specimens during their rotation. This includes review of the pertinent clinical history; performing FNAs when appropriate, review of the specimen for adequacy on site, discussion with the technical staff for cytopreparatory techniques when necessary, and screening and diagnosis of the slides. The residents also participate in any special procedures performed at the time of FNA, such as collection of material for flow cytometry.

Residents are required to screen and review the microscopic findings of each specimen. They are expected to preview as many of their cases as possible prior to signing them out. The resident has up to 1 p.m. (or the time designated by the faculty member) to preview the cases and formulate a cogent diagnosis. At this time, the resident will review the cases with the cytopathologist. With faculty guidance, residents are responsible for directly deciding what additional ancillary studies may be necessary in order to complete each case.

Each resident will be graded as to “agree, partially agree, or disagree” for each microscopic diagnosis. The resident will receive a written evaluation with summary statistics for him/herself compared to the overall resident mean. The resident can review all the cases in which he/she had a discrepancy with the faculty pathologist by requesting a print-out of such cases from Mr. Ed Grey, the informational technology specialist for Co-Path. The number of cases reviewed independently and the accuracy of both cytology diagnoses as measured by percentage agreement and the rotation evaluation are expected to increase with increasing resident seniority.