General Surgical Pathology
The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine offers one-year fellowships in General Surgical Pathology and Subspecialty Surgical Pathology. For Subspecialty Surgical Pathology Fellowships, please visit our dedicated webpage.
The General Surgical Pathology program is a non-accredited fellowship program held to the same standards as our accredited programs. The General Surgical Pathology fellows rotate through the equivalent of month-long assignments at a senior or supervisorial level. The year is intended to provide the fellow with the last layer of confidence necessary to practice surgical pathology independently in a variety of settings from small community hospitals to large community hospitals or academic institutions. In addition, during a 4-week frozen section rotation at The Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center, the fellow will serve as the frozen section/gross room supervisor to oversee the preparation, interpretation, and communication of intraoperative consults, and will guide residents and physician assistants in the gross analysis and processing of specimens for frozen section and tissue procurement. The fellow on frozen section answers questions from the specimen accessioning staff on the processing of biopsies. The fellow also serves as the primary "go to person" for physicians and nurses with questions on specimen handling.
As a Junior Attending at the UCLA Center for Health Sciences, the fellow will rotate every two weeks on different surgical pathology subspecialty services, previewing cases with the residents on service, including challenging outside consult cases, and presenting cases to the attending of record, ready to be finalized. The fellow independently orders ancillary studies as appropriate. The expectation is that the fellow will be able to prepare a thorough and final report on most cases, double scoping (consulting) with the attending of record on a minority of cases, which require consultation before finalization. The attending of record evaluates the fellow on whether they are "practice ready". Additional duties include presenting at tumor boards, supervising/teaching junior residents in the gross room and in the preparation of their write ups, preparing telepathology consult cases, and serving as back up fellow for frozen section.
The fellow will also rotate for 2-3 months at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center (a 281 bed academic and community hospital with a large surgical oncology division). The fellow reviews and writes up all surgical cases, biopsies, and cytology cases independently, including ordering ancillary studies as appropriate. Cases are general in scope, ranging daily from small biopsies to small excisions to large oncologic resection cases. The fellow presents the cases to the attendings on service, ready to be finalized. The expectation is that the fellow will be able to prepare a thorough and final report on most cases, double scoping (consulting) with attendings on a minority of cases which require consultation before finalization. The attendings evaluate the fellow on whether they are "practice ready".
Fellows will have the opportunity to independently sign-out clinical cases and perform intraoperative/frozen section consultations when the fellow is ready. There will be a proctoring process in place to determine the fellow’s readiness to have these clinical privileges, and the expectation is that all fellows will progress to independent sign-out by the end of their fellowship.
Fellows are also granted 4-8 weeks of elective time to pursue additional training in any subspecialty areas of interest (including lymphoma, cytology/FNA), or to pursue research.
Contact Information
Steven Hart, MD
Co-Director, Surgical Pathology Fellowship
Email
David Y. Lu, MD
Co-Director, Surgical Pathology Fellowship
Email
Fellowship Coordinator
Andrew Aldapa
Phone: (310) 206-1770 | Email