Pediatric Pathology Fellowship

Aims Statement

Our Pediatric Pathology Fellowship program aims are: 1) To accept fellows with passion for Perinatal/Pediatric Pathology and strong records and recommendations from their medical school and residency program. 2) To train fellows who intend to practice Pediatric Pathology in an academic or community setting and/or do research in Pediatric Pathology disciplines. 3) To encourage fellows to take advantage of clinical interaction with strong Pediatric clinical programs. 4) To encourage fellows to collaborate with physician scientists in clinical, translational, and basic research endeavors. 5) To require fellow engagement with professional societies in the form of research presentations. 6) To systematically transition fellows to perform the role of an attending in preparation for their future career.

Overview

The Pediatric Pathology Fellowship Program at UT Southwestern Medical Center is an ACGME-accredited program located at Children’s Health℠ Children’s Medical Center, a 600-bed, private, tertiary care pediatric hospital that is the primary pediatric teaching hospital for the UT Southwestern Medical School. State-of-the-art flow cytometry and an outstanding Cytogenetics Laboratory reside within the Department of Pathology and are readily accessible to the fellow, as is electron microscopy at Children’s Medical Center. Children’s is nationally recognized in multiple subspecialty areas, and the case mix includes challenging as well as routine cases. The pediatric pathologists sign out the placenta and perinatal cases at Parkland Health & Hospital System, a large public facility.

There is a close working relationship between Pediatric Pathology and other clinical departments of the hospital, most of which have strong residency and/or fellowship programs of their own. The Pediatric Pathology fellow serves as a formal or informal clinical consultant to these various clinical services throughout the year. The fellow also serves as a consultant to and teacher of Pathology residents who rotate on the Pediatric Pathology Service.

Pediatric Pathology maintains a large library of current texts pertinent to Pediatric Pathology. In addition, the fellow has ready access to the libraries of the staff Pediatric pathologists. The University of Texas Southwestern Health Sciences Library is only five minutes away and most journals can be accessed online from Children’s Medical Center. A teaching set of glass slides accompanied by brief clinical histories is located in the Pediatric Pathology area and covers all areas of Pediatric Pathology and Hematopathology. The collection currently encompasses more than 600 cases. The group also maintains a photograph collection and electronic database of autopsy and surgical material arranged by accession number.

An institutional permit from Children’s Medical Center is required unless the fellow has a license to practice medicine in the State of Texas. The fellow will be provided with health insurance, a laptop, a book fund, and malpractice insurance through UT Southwestern.

UT Southwestern Medical Center is committed to an educational and working environment that provides equal opportunity to all members of the University community. As an equal opportunity employer, UT Southwestern prohibits unlawful discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, genetic information, citizenship status, or veteran status.

Program Description

The overall goal of the Pediatric Pathology Fellowship Program is to provide the trainee with the basic skills required for the practice of pediatric pathology in an academic or community setting. It is recognized that education is a lifelong process and that the field of pediatric pathology cannot mastered in a year (or a lifetime), and the intent of the program is to provide the fellow with a foundation on which to build a career of independent learning and practice. The mechanism for achieving this goal is through mentoring of the trainee by an excellent pediatric pathology faculty with diverse skills and interests, associated with an abundance of clinical material and educational resources.

The fellow, having already completed a pathology residency, will know the essentials of anatomic (and clinical) pathology and will be expected to build upon these skills with particular emphasis in their application to the fetus, infant, and child. At the completion of the program, the fellow should:

Be familiar with dissection techniques as they apply to the pediatric autopsy and to surgical specimens from pediatric patients.
Know histologic features of legions/diseases peculiar to the Pediatric patient, be able to formulate an appropriate differential diagnosis, and understand the morphologic and clinical laboratory tools available to reach the correct diagnosis.
Be familiar with the clinical correlates of common and uncommon Pediatric diseases.
Be able to assist clinicians in the appropriate use of the clinical laboratory for the diagnosis of Pediatric disease.
Be imbued with the desire to ask scientific questions that might be answered through study of the material coming to the attention of the pediatric pathologist and to collaborate with clinicians in their research endeavors.
Be able to educate the clinician in the pathologic basis of Pediatric disease through conferences and collegial consultation.
The fellow participates in a combination of Surgical Pathology, Cytopathology, Gastrointestinal Pathology, Placental Pathology, and Clinical Pathology throughout the year with ad hoc participation in autopsies until they reach the ACGME-required 40 cases (typically in the spring). Performance of additional autopsies is at their discretion. During the second half of the year, fellows have increased triage responsibilities in preparation for future independent practice. Up to 12 weeks distributed throughout the year are customizable and can be used to gain additional experience in any service area of Pediatric Pathology or for research.
Conference participation by the fellow will depend upon the nature of the conference. It is generally expected that the fellow will present any case that he or she has signed out, including autopsies and surgical cases, with full responsibility for demonstrating the morphologic findings and adding correlative comments.

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Benefits

Faculty