The Department of Pathology at NYU Langone offers a summer fellowship for medical students at NYU Grossman School of Medicine who have successfully completed their first year of medical school. This position takes place over the course of 6 weeks in June and July, and fellows receive a $2,750 stipend.

The goal of our summer fellowship is to provide you with an opportunity to experience anatomic and clinical pathology in an academic medical center and learn the basic skills and processes required to practice anatomic pathology and laboratory medicine.

During the fellowship, you spend four weeks in anatomic pathology (two weeks in general surgical pathology, one week in autopsy pathology, and one week in an elective) and two weeks in clinical pathology (laboratory medicine). Our fellowship curriculum is flexible and can be adjusted depending on your specific interests.

Anatomic Pathology Rotations and Electives

Elective opportunities in anatomic pathology include the following subspecialty areas:

• bone and soft tissue pathology
• cytopathology
• dermatopathology
• gastrointestinal and hepatic pathology
• head and neck pathology
• hematopathology
• neuropathology
• uropathology
• women’s pathology

Before you start rotations, you tour the histology lab, gross room, morgue, frozen section areas, and core laboratories. You also receive training in personal and laboratory safety, patient safety, and quality assurance.

Anatomic pathology rotations include general surgical pathology, cytopathology, and autopsy pathology. You observe pathologists preparing for frozen sections and fine-needle aspirations. Under the supervision of an attending physician and senior residents, you participate in the grossing of clinical cases as well as the preparation of tissues and fluids for microscopic examination. You learn the principles of gross examination and accurate tissue sectioning as it pertains to the specific disease process, such as cancer staging protocols and tissue procurement for research protocols.

Students are actively involved in clinical signout at the multi-headed microscope and learn how to construct a complete surgical pathology report. While on the autopsy rotation, you learn the process of obtaining autopsy consent and the principles of death certification, and are introduced to the role of the medical examiner. You also observe an autopsy prosection and begin to learn how to formulate a final anatomic diagnosis.

Clinical Pathology Rotations

While on clinical pathology, you rotate through core clinical laboratories including hematology (peripheral blood smears, bone marrow aspirates and biopsies, and flow cytometry), cytogenetics, molecular medicine, clinical chemistry, transfusion medicine, microbiology, and virology. You work alongside trained laboratory supervisors and staff to learn the concepts of quality control, sensitivity and specificity, test attributes, and basic problems in laboratory management such as workload recording and personnel practices.

The clinical pathology curriculum also emphasizes the integration and correlation of clinical and laboratory findings, familiarity with the process of laboratory accreditation as administered by the College of American Pathologists and the understanding of quality assurance, problem solving, and communication skills as they pertain to laboratory management.

Training for Pathology Residency

The summer fellowship overlaps with the beginning of postgraduate training for the Pathology Residency. For both anatomic pathology and clinical pathology, a boot camp‒style orientation takes place throughout the month of July. Boot camp includes introductory didactic sessions on the use of the specific pathology-based computer systems, accurate navigation of the electronic medical record, histotechniques (including various fixative types and their use, tissue processing, and sectioning), histochemistry and immunohistochemistry, and on-call procedures in anatomic pathology and clinical pathology. These didactic sessions are followed by introductory sessions organized by organ systems.

All summer fellows are active participants in boot camp and its didactic resident teaching sessions and department-sponsored seminars. Additionally, you are given slide study sets, sample pathology reports, and additional resource materials pertaining to each rotation. You have the opportunity to review materials with a faculty advisor once a week or more.

You are also encouraged to participate in quality assurance and quality improvement initiatives, departmental case presentations and case reporting, and translational research projects.