One Hundred Years of the Pathology Medical Student Fellowship

• Published in: Archives of pathology & laboratory medicine (1976) Vol. 146; no. 8; pp. 1037 - 1042
• Main Authors: Hammer, Phoebe, Ireland, Karen, Houghton, Donald C, Jaggers, Alexis, Coleman, Anya, Snir, Olivia L, Troxell, Megan L, Andeen, Nicole K
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Northfield College of American Pathologists 01.08.2022
• Subjects: Archives & records; Autopsies; Careers; Emergency medical care; Internal medicine; Medical education; Medical schools; Medical students; Medicine; Neurosurgery; Pathology; Polls & surveys; Scholarships & fellowships; Surgery
• ISSN: 0003-9985; 1543-2165
• DOI: 10.5858/arpa.2021-0220-OA)

(Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2022;146:1037-1042; doi: 10.5858/arpa.2021-0220-OA) The Pathology Medical Student Fellowship (PSF) is a unique educational experience that allows medical students to explore the field of pathology as practiced in the clinical and academic setting, and is offered by approximately 15% of ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education)-accredited Anatomic and Clinical Pathology Residency programs.1 At our institution and others, this is an intensive, 1-year training program before or between clinical years of medical school in which selected medical students take on roles similar to first-year pathology residents. The oldest continuously running PSF was reportedly founded in 1926 by George Hoyt Whipple, MD, then dean of medicine at University of Rochester School of Medicine.2-4 However, Oregon Health Science University institutional archives document a medical student fellowship in pathology, founded in 1919,5,6 with Warren Hunter, MD, as the first medical student mentored in this role, who later served as chair of the Pathology Department.7 With 2 to 3 participants per year, approximately 250 pathology medical student fellows ("student fellows") have graduated from our institution in the last 100 years, representing, to the best of our knowledge, the oldest, non-continuously running pathology medical student fellowship in the country. [...]our study highlights its benefits for physicians in all fields of medicine. The most common nonpathology specialties were internal medicine (21 of 145, 14.5%), family medicine (12 of 145, 8.3%), emergency medicine (9 of 145, 6.2%), and surgical subspecialties (9 of 145, 6.2%), including orthopedics, otolaryngology, plastic surgery, urology, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, and ophthalmology (Table 1).