CAPcast from the College of American Pathologists

It’s critical for pathologists to maintain their clinical pathology expertise, according to Dr. Jon Heusel, Director of Clinical and Translational Genomics and Chief Medical Officer of Genomics and Pathology Services at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Heusel will talk about why maintaining expertise in clinical pathology is so important, and how a program from the CAP can help ALL pathologists do just that.

HistoQIP is a quality assurance program for histopathology, jointly sponsored by the National Society for Histotechnology and the College of American Pathologists. The primary focus of this program is to improve the quality of histologic preparations routinely performed in the histology laboratory through education. In this CAPcast from the College of American Pathologists, pathologist Dr. Matthew Carr of Western Michigan Pathology Associates and ASCP certified histotechnologist Sue Lewis discuss how the program works and how it can help pathologists, laboratory managers and their staff members improve the quality of their histology laboratory operations. For more information, visit https://nsh.org/content/all-about-histoqip.

Because medical training is lacking in financial education, new pathologists are often at a loss when diagnosing their financial health. But the burden of student debt, modest resident salaries, and the societal pressures of ‘‘physician wealth’’ can lead to financial despair, depression, and burnout during training, writes Dr. Anne Mills in an editorial recently published on the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine website. In this CAPcast, Dr. Mills, a pathologist at the University of Virginia, discusses the challenges many young pathologists face in understanding their financial situation and some steps they can take toward financial stability.

The incidence of HPV-related head and neck carcinomas is rising in the United States, with the greatest increase among middle-aged white men. In fact, more than 95% of oral cancers are squamous cell carcinomas, a type that is most closely linked to high-risk HPV. The urgent need to understand HPV's impact on head and neck cancer patients is driving the need for a new evidence-based clinical practice guideline just released by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and available in early online release from the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine (http://capatholo.gy/2AUcwbG). In this CAPcast, Dr. William C. Faquin, a pathologist from Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the significance of these guidelines and how clinicians and pathologists can best implement them. Visit CAP.org for more resources on how pathologists can implement these guidelines: http://capatholo.gy/2BMfPoX.

Many—if not most—pathologists come out of training with little or no confidence in their knowledge about blood banking and transfusion medicine. That’s where Dr. Joe Chaffin—also known as the Blood Bank Guy—comes in. Through his Blood Bank Guy podcasts and videos, Dr. Chaffin is focused on educating pathology residents, practicing pathologists, and laboratorians on the basics and common misconceptions about transfusion medicine, as he explains in the CAPcast.

Pathologists can make a solid case for introducing an emerging technology into their laboratory—even one without a reimbursement code—by creating a business plan, according to Dr. Wendy Wells, the chair of pathology and laboratory medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Dr. Wells spoke about creating such a business plan for ex vivo microscopy earlier this year at CAP17. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Wells will discuss this emerging technology and the important components of a business plan, including establishing financial justification for a technology that is not yet reimbursable. For more on emerging technologies such as in vivo and ex vivo microscopy, visit the CAP IVM Topic Center: http://capatholo.gy/2zDnJzY.

Nearly 40% of physicians say that fragmented or missing information on pathology reports is a barrier to accurately diagnose and characterize cancer. To improve the consistency and reliability of cancer reporting, the CAP and mTuitive have developed the Electronic Forms and Reporting Module, or eFRM for short. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Jason Pettus, a pathologist with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, discusses his experience with eFRM and cancer reporting.

One of the new frontiers in pathology, in vivo microscopy(IVM) offers new roles and opportunities for pathologists, specifically those who are still in training and those early in their career. In this CAPcast, Dr. Hany Osman, who is currently the first IVM fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, will discuss why IVM is so full of potential for young pathologists. He will also discuss a project that he is working on, an IVM Atlas. For more information, visit the CAP IVM Topic Center: http://capatholo.gy/2lzvyRx.

The CAP’s recently launched Test Ordering Program offers tools and self-assessment modules to assist pathologists in understanding and improving test utilization, so that the pathologist, in collaboration with clinician colleagues, can improve the value and effectiveness of the wider health care organization. In this CAPcast from the College of American Pathologists, Dr. Ronald Schifman, a pathologist with the Veterans Health Administration, discusses the wide-ranging benefits of this program, which is free to CAP members. Dr. Schifman also shares his experience with improving test utilization at the VA and how these improvements impacted patient care. For more on the CAP's Test Ordering Program, visit http://capatholo.gy/test-ordering-program.

Physician wellness and burnout is the new epidemic in health. By some estimates, 30% to 68% of physicians are experiencing symptoms of burnout, and it exceeds any other professional group. The ramifications of burnout include a 1 in 4 probability of the physician leaving their work situation in the ensuing three years, not to mention the risk of intemperate drug use or suicide, explained Stanford physician and best-selling author Dr. Abraham Verghese at the recent CAP17 meeting in the Washington, DC, area, where he was the meeting’s Spotlight Speaker. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Verghese delves deeper into what’s driving physician burnout, the impact, and what, if anything, can be done to reverse burnout.