Teaching Opportunities
The Residency Program offers a range of teaching opportunities for pathology residents at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania because it is committed to education and to developing excellent teachers at all levels.
Learning how to teach and becoming an effective teacher are important goals of Penn Pathology’s residency training. Demonstrating an ability to teach others is specifically identified as one of the Milestones for Pathology (MK2).
In the Pathology training program, residents learn teaching skills from faculty within the Department and from others in the health system through our leadership program.
In addition, residents have access to all of the teaching programs for faculty that are offered through the “Advance” program sponsored by Faculty Affairs and Professional Development at the Perelman School of Medicine. Link to FAPD list of courses.
Residents receive formal and informal feedback from faculty and attendees about their teaching, providing them with the information needed to continue to improve their skills. In addition to learning teaching skills, residents have multiple opportunities to practice them in a variety of educational settings.
Examples of Teaching Opportunities
Medical Student Teaching
The department teaches Organ Histology and Organ Pathology to the first- and second-year medical students at the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM). Residents are paired with a faculty member to teach small groups of ~20 medical students. Each resident will have several opportunities to teach medical students during their training. Advanced teaching opportunities for senior residents interested in leading a small group, without a faculty member, are also available.
Formal Lectures
Residents give four 1-hour lectures during residency to the faculty and residents in the Department, with the goal of being able to deliver an outstanding formal talk by the end their training. Focused feedback from faculty and attendees help the resident achieve competence in their lecturing skills.
Residents also frequently present cases at conferences, and learn the skills needed to deliver shorter, more focused presentations. A hallmark of the Department’s residents is their participation at professional meetings and conferences. Residents present abstracts, posters, and oral presentations at a variety of local, national and international conferences.
The Department frequently ranks among the top-ten programs in the country for abstracts accepted for the Stowell-Orbison Award at the annual USCAP meetings. The Department also regularly ranks in the top 20% of more than 400 medical school programs and academic institutions in the country for the number of first-authored abstracts accepted for presentation at USCAP meetings.
Informal Lectures and “Teaching at the Scope”
Residents lead microscopic slide sessions for other residents in the program as part of the didactic series, as well as teach trainees from other subspecialties who come to the Pathology Department to view their cases. In daily interactions with clinical colleagues, residents contact clinicians, do frozen section callbacks, and teach continually in their daily work.
