glFusion Site

Happy New Year

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:33:28 -0600

Quiz time

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:58:47 -0600

Ok here it is Board oriented quiz...UPDATE: The tutorial with questions and explanations is uploaded

Here are few things to keep in mind:

1. The quiz uses Adobe Flash so make sure that you have the latest player updates...[here]

2. The quiz contains 140 questions. You can submit one question at time and you will have 2h and 30min to complete the test.

3. In the lower left hand corner there is a big round button which you can click to view the table of contents (TOC). You can navigate to different questions from there.

4. Answers will NOT be given at this time. There will be a separate tutorial quiz with the same questions and answers.

5. The quiz will cover General Pathology, Organ Pathology, Forensic science, Molecular biology, few Microbiology questions and NO clinical pathology questions.

6. Click the images to view larger size

I will really appreciate if you give me a feedback about the question difficulty, correctness and a spelling ( I apologize if you find some mistakes). This will help me to fine tune the quiz.

Ok wish you luck:

OPEN THE QUIZ BY CLICKING HERE

The tutorial has all of the above questions and will also show you the answers and explanations. You can open the tutorial HERE.

Benign vs Malignant repost

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:37:07 -0500

Ok since I have lost this article I will go ahead and repost it.

I split the cytologic criteria in 2 major groups.

I. Low power features:

Necrosis ( careful with infections, foreign bodies, diabetes and RA)
Increased celularity
Unusual background substances ( mucin, colloid or keratin to name few)
3 dimensional celular architecture. This feature is good for epithelial malignancies which express surface adhesion molecules EpCAM

II. High power features:

Increased celularity composed of s single cell clone
Increased N:C ratios
Nuclear membrane irregularities
Prominent, irregular "Cherri red" nucleoli. Especially if nucleoli are as big as a mature lymphocyte
Individual cell apoptosis
Abnormal mitoses as well as increased number of mitoses
Increased vascularity ( look for small capillaries)
Evidence of desmoplasia or invasion if large tissue fragments are present.
Necrosis ( demonstrated by nuclear dust)
3D clusters as above
Nuclear margination ( nucleus is touching the cellular membrane)
Effaced cellular polarity. If not effaced then we call it "school of fish" which is feature of a reactive process.
Nuclear hyperchromasia ("pitch dark" nuclei like in squamous cell carcinoma or urotelial carcinomas)

Pathology Job Market in USA

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:49:19 -0500

Since the site has been fixed lets talk again about the status of Pathology jobs in USA...

Finding a perfect job in Pathology will be very easy if:

You are not married and have no kids
If you are good in all fields of Pathology (grossing, frozen sections, slides and cytopathology)
If you are going to work in private practice
You don't care about location.
You passed the boards
Somebody made a phone call for you

The more you have from the above the easier will it be for you to find a job. The biggest difficulties will arise of course from the following:

You have a working wife and kids
You care about location (daycares, safe neighborhood, schools)
If you want to work for academic institution
You have not passed the boards
You have no one to make a call for you.

The next question is the actual process of finding your perfect job. Lack of advertisement is one of the major obstacles here. Most of the positions are advertised with the e-mail between the directors of the programs or friends that’s why having a mentor who is well known on the field is extremely important.

Read and familiarize yourself with this article.

ONLINE SOURCES OF JOB ADVERTISMENT:

PathologyOutlines– well most probably you know this site already. This is by far the biggest pathology site on the Internet with, I would say, rather active job advertisements. Here are few stats:

April/2008 – May/2008 – 20 job advertisements: 17-USA, 1- New Zealand, 2- Canada
May-2008- June/2008 – 11 Jobs advertisements: 6 –USA ( 1 residency), 2- Canada, 1-Abroad
June/2008 – July/2008 – 25 Jobs, 1- abroad

I did not count advertisements seeking subspecialty training like thoracic pathologist with minimum 3 years or experience, also I did not count recurrent positions which are obviously are waiting for God’s CV to show up ( look up Columbia University and Wail campus) and I also did not count directorships positions. Now if you take all of this into account you may end up with about 2-3 new jobs every month which are open for a junior pathologist as well. 95% of the time the job advertisements are academic positions.

NOTE: according to the above article there are 544 applications being submits for year 2006..and the number of new positions opening a month using PathologyOulines will be about 2-3 new jobs/month. You bet that most of the graduates will apply for their home base job openings first and then for all of the other jobs. Note the slide labeled “What do graduates think ?”. Asking the question there are numerous jobs opportunities for graduates 38% agree, but the issue is that 62% actually disagree and had difficulty finding a job.

CAP job board ( Career Network) – speaking of disaster you may want to check out the College of American Pathologist job board. If you upload your CV within 1 year no one will ever look into it ( I interviewed 7 residents using this CMS) or will notice you personal resume site. The job advertisements are not updated and most are seeking directors, or minimum 3-4 years of experience. Go and browse if you find a job there consider yourself lucky.

(To be continued…)

PS I would love to hear your comments if you had difficulty finding a job.