Undergraduate Medical Education
The Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine provides two courses in the second year of medical school: General Pathology and Immunology (6 credit hours) and Systemic Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (9 credit hours). General Pathology is taught from late August through mid-October and includes 3 examinations. Systemic Pathology runs from mid-October through later February with the NBME Pathology Shelf examination administered in early March. There are 5 other examinations in Systemic Pathology.
General Pathology provides students with a fundamental basis for understanding human disease. The topics span cell stress and injury, adaptation, necrosis, apoptosis, inflammation and repair to carcinogenesis, microbiologic pathology and forensic pathology. Systemic Pathology focuses on organ-based disease combining the disciplines of anatomic and clinical pathology.
A wide variety of teaching modalities are used including lectures, labs, small-group-case-based sessions, Robbin's interactive cases, elective autopsy rotations, rotations with on-service pathology faculty and rounds with the Department Chair. Educational activities focus on problem solving as do the examinations. About 2/3 of the activities are lecture and about 1/3 of the activities are laboratory and small group sessions.
Approximately 50 faculty participate in the course including faculty from Pathology Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics. In the past decade, Pathology has won several basic science Gold Apple awards for the course. As well, several faculty have been recognized for their excellence in teaching including Sigurd Normann, MD, PhD, William Clapp, MD and William E. Winter, MD. Residents play a significant role in supervising the labs and small group activities.