A new course to bridge the gap between the laboratory and patient care: Pathology 777

Abstract

Graduate students can lose sight of the whole patient as a dynamic system during their studies of an individual protein or pathway. Clinicians become discouraged if there is nothing left in the treatment repertoire for their patients and hope there will be better future options. To bridge this gap between the bench and clinical practice, a new course was developed for Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate students at UAB. The student requirements were to attend and participate in a full adult autopsy (from chart review, evisceration and organ dissection, Hematoxylin and Eosin slide review, and CNS examination) along side the pathology resident. Following the full autopsy, the students presented highlights of the links between their laboratory work and the disease processes occurring in the patient. We discuss a patient who presented to UAB for repeat right lower extremity bypass grafting who had many post operative complications that culminated in her death. We show the benefits of such a course for the pathology resident and the student. It provided a framework for the students and residents to discuss the needs in the clinic and the correlation to the student's work on wound healing. This course was offered within UAB Department of Pathology and thus received no research funding.