Program Structure

The five-year Anatomical Pathology curriculum is offered over 65 four-week blocks. Embracing a competency-based philosophy, training is organized into four distinct stages: Transition to Discipline, Foundations of Discipline, Core of Discipline and Transition to Practice within which residents develop entrustable competence in specific professional activities. Surgical pathology training is organized into organ-based subspecialty rotations. This is a real strength as residents can focus on attaining mastery of the gross and microscopic pathology of one organ system at a time allowing for the rapid acquisition of competence in that area.

Residents work directly with sub-specialist faculty members allowing for high-quality, daily face-to-face teaching. As residents progress though the program they are afforded progressively greater responsibility and by the completion of the program are ready to function as independent junior consultants.

Learning Environment

One of the key strengths of the Anatomical Pathology program at Queen’s is its smaller size. New learners are warmly welcomed into a collegial and friendly environment, which fosters a close and supportive relationship between faculty and residents. The size of the program ensures daily one-on-one teaching opportunities, and faculty are able to offer frequent formal and informal feedback.

Academic Curriculum

In addition to the daily face-to-face learning that occurs on each rotation, the program provides a comprehensive academic curriculum that is centered around the academic half-day, but that also involves numerous other rounds throughout the week. A thematic curriculum is organized on a two-year cycle such that residents are exposed to each subject twice in this venue over the course of their residency. Protected time is provided for teaching rounds to allow residents to maximally participate.

As residents approach their Royal College examinations, the program also provides funding for participation in a Canadian review course.

Hospitals and Facilities

Anatomical Pathology training occurs exclusively at the Kingston Health Sciences Centre – Kingston General Hospital (KGH) Site, southeastern Ontario’s leading centre for complex-acute and specialty care. KGH is also home to the Cancer Centre of Southeastern Ontario, allowing for a wide range of oncologic pathology. The hospital serves almost 500,000 people and the large consultative service for pathology ensures an excellent mix of case material and numbers to provide good volume for residents.

KGH is a regional forensic centre, ensuring that residents are exposed to a wide breadth of autopsy cases. The autopsy suite at KGH can accommodate the performance of two concurrent autopsies and full technical support is available at all times. The suite contains state-of-the-art equipment for gross photography, including a stereoscope and a post-mortem x-ray suite. Residents have access to photomicroscopes with immunofluorescence capability, a faxitron for radiological examination of specimens, and a rapidly expanding archive of digital gross and microscopic images.

Surgical pathology facilities include a large and well-equipped histopathology laboratory housing a grossing area, frozen section area, histopathology bench space (including special stains and immunohistochemistry sections) and a cytology wet lab. Surgical training in genetics-based diagnostics is supported by our molecular genetic and cytogenetic laboratories, a flow cytometry laboratory, and electron microscopy. This allows for optimal interactions between diverse aspects of the laboratory.

Research

Our Resident Research Director helps match resident interest with research opportunities. Research success is celebrated at an annual off-site departmental resident research day with an invited guest speaker. The program offers generous annual financial support for residents to present their work at national and international meetings.

Residents interested in academic careers benefit from available research electives. For residents interested in completing a graduate degree while a resident there is a clinical investigator program. Residents are supported in applying for independent funding and scholarships, should they wish to, and recently have met with much success in doing so.

With millions in annual operating grants, the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at Queen’s is one of Canada’s leading Pathology research centres. Residents are able to work in established laboratories, which use multidisciplinary techniques to investigate fields such as molecular oncology, vascular biology, genetics, molecular hemostasis, amyloidogenesis, and cholesterol metabolism.

Faculty and residents often collaborate with the Queen’s Cancer Research Institute, a nationally respected transdisciplinary facility offering 60,000 square feet of dedicated research space. Translational research has emerged as another strength of the Department through this association.

Careers

The program offers excellent training for residents interested in pursuing careers in either community hospital-based, academic, or forensic pathology.

Queen’s residents have also met with great success in obtaining premiere Fellowship positions with field-leaders at institutions across North America including Harvard (Brigham and Women’s, Beth Israel Deaconess, Massachusetts General), Cedar Sinai, Yale, Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson, Cornell and Memorial Sloan Kettering.

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