The Goals of Resident Training in Laboratory Medicine in Combined Anatomic Pathology/Clinical Pathology Programs: An Overview

Training of residents in the discipline of laboratory medicine is confounded by the diversity of the subdisciplines of clinical pathology each with specific knowledge sets, and the career goals of the residents who are focused on different aspects of clinical pathology. What guides this training is not the detailed knowledge sets or the specific technologies per se, but a focus on the principles that undergird all of laboratory medicine. Thus, the goal of clinical pathology training is to develop a clinical consultant who can apply laboratory-derived, population-based clinical data and laboratory-based therapeutics, along with a firm knowledge of the underlying biotechnology from which these are derived, to the benefit of individual patients. Furthermore, this pathologist must be steeped in the skills required for lifelong learning and adaptation.