Educational Goals

The principal goal of the program is to provide the trainee with the basic skills required for the practice of pediatric pathology in an academic or community hospital. It is recognized that education is a life long process and that the field of pediatric pathology cannot be mastered in a year (or a lifetime). The mechanism for achieving this goal is 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 will have already acquired basic skills in anatomic and clinical pathology prior to entering the program and is 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:

1. Be familiar with dissection techniques as they apply to the pediatric autopsy (e.g. congenital heart disease, congenital malformations) and surgical specimens from pediatric patients (e.g. Wilms' tumor).
2. Know the histologic features of lesions/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.
3. Be familiar with the clinical correlates of common and uncommon pediatric diseases.
4. Be able to assist clinicians in the appropriate use of the clinical laboratory for the diagnosis of pediatric disease.
5. 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.
6. Be able to educate the clinician in the pathologic basis of pediatric disease through conferences and collegial consultation.