Aptitude testing and assessment of training progress in histopathology

Histopathology has a widely differing skill set from that produced by undergraduate medical education and from that of most other medical specialties. Visuospatial reasoning and visuospatial memory are core abilities for histopathology that will not have been assessed in any depth during medical undergraduate education. There is potential to develop aptitude tests for the histopathology skill set that would assist in selecting the most appropriate candidates for histopathology training, but there are insufficient data in this area to propose this at present. Assessment of progress during histopathology training has two important functions-to determine the suitability of candidates for histopathology early in their training (entry function), and to determine when trainees are ready for full independent practice as consultants (exit function). Assessment can be made by objective and subjective methods, which need to be tailored to the skills being assessed and the point in the training process.