The next phase in patient safety education: Towards a standardized, tools-based pathology patient safety curriculum: A call to action from the Association of Pathology Chairs' Residency Program Directors Section Training Residents in Patient Safety Workgroup.

Patient safety education is a mandated Common Program Requirement of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in all medical residency and fellowship programs. Although many hospitals and healthcare environments have general patient safety education tools for trainees, few to none focus on the unique training milieu of pathologists, including a mix of highly automated and manual error-prone processes, frequent multiplicity of events, and lack of direct patient relationships for error disclosure. We established a national Association of Pathology Chairs-Program Directors Section Workgroup focused on patient safety education for pathology trainees entitled Training Residents in Patient Safety (TRIPS). TRIPS included diverse representatives from across the United States, as well as representatives from pathology organizations including the American Board of Pathology, the American Society for Clinical Pathology, the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, the College of American Pathologists, and the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine. Objectives of the workgroup included developing a standardized patient safety curriculum, designing teaching and assessment tools, and refining them with pilot sites. Here we report the establishment of TRIPS as well as data from national needs assessment of Program Directors across the country, who confirmed the need for a standardized patient safety curriculum.

Women in Academic Pathology: Pathways to Department Chair.

The Association of Pathology Chairs, an organization of American and Canadian academic pathology departments, has a record percent of women department chairs in its ranks (31%), although still not representative of the percent of women pathology faculty (43%). These women chairs were surveyed to determine what had impeded and what had facilitated their academic advancement before becoming chairs. The 2 most frequently identified impediments to their career advancement were heavy clinical loads and the lack of time, training, and/or funding to pursue research. Related to the second impediment, only one respondent became chair of a department which was in a top 25 National Institutes of Health-sponsored research medical school. Eighty-nine percent of respondents said that they had experienced gender bias during their careers in pathology, and 31% identified gender bias as an important impediment to advancement. The top facilitator of career advancement before becoming chairs was a supportive family. Strikingly, 98% of respondents have a spouse or partner, 75% have children, and 38% had children younger than 18 when becoming chairs. Additional top facilitators were opportunities to attend national meetings and opportunities to participate in leadership. Previous leadership experiences included directing a clinical service, a residency training program, and/or a medical student education program. These results suggest important ways to increase the success of women in academic pathology and increasing the percent of women department chairs, including supporting a family life and providing time, encouragement and resources for research, attending national meetings, and taking on departmental leadership positions.

Social Media Engagement at Academic Conferences: Report of the Association of Pathology Chairs 2018 and 2019 Annual Meeting Social Media Committee.

The use of social media at academic conferences is expanding, and platforms such as Twitter are used to share meeting content with the world. Pathology conferences are no exception, and recently, pathology organizations have promoted social media as a way to enhance meeting exposure. A social media committee was formed ad hoc to implement strategies to enhance social media involvement and coverage at the 2018 and 2019 annual meetings of the Association of Pathology Chairs. This organized approach resulted in an 11-fold increase in social media engagement compared to the year prior to committee formation (2017). In this article, the social media committee reviews the strategies that were employed and the resultant outcome data. In addition, we categorize tweets by topic to identify the topics of greatest interest to meeting participants, and we discuss the differences between Twitter and other social media platforms. Lastly, we review the existing literature on this topic from 23 medical specialties and health care fields.

Utilizing Social Media to Spread Knowledge: The Association of Pathology Chairs Experience at the 2018 Annual Meeting.

Participants at academic conferences frequently use social media to disseminate educational content learned while at the meeting. Although most agree that this activity is harmless, some have expressed concern regarding the accuracy of the shared content and whether it truly reflects the intent and message of the speaker. As part of the goals of the APC 2018 social media committee to promote excellence through social media, a study was conducted to measure the perceived accuracy of tweets that represented an opinion or statement from a speaker and was shared during the annual meeting. Tweets shared on Twitter using the meeting hashtag (#APCPRODS2018) were collected and a survey unique to each speaker was created, to which 54% responded. The majority of speakers regarded the use of Twitter at the conference as beneficial in spreading their intended message in an accurate way. This study exemplifies the positive impact that social media use can have at academic meetings.

Retaining the Value of Former Department Chairs: The Association of Pathology Chairs Experience.

Serving as a clinical department chair in an academic health center is an increasingly complex and difficult position. In 2014, the Association of Pathology Chairs engaged former chairs to assist its members by establishing an ad hoc committee of "Senior Fellows," which then became a permanent Senior Fellows Group. The Senior Fellows Group currently includes more than 50 former chairs, many of whom subsequently served as deans, medical center executives, and in other leadership roles. The primary mission of the Senior Fellows Group has been to provide advice, consultation, and mentoring to members of the Association of Pathology Chairs, especially new chairs and faculty interested in leadership roles. All new chairs are asked if they wish to select or be assigned a Senior Fellow advisor. Each Senior Fellow is listed on the Association of Pathology Chairs website with the areas of advice they are willing to provide, which include: "on-boarding" issues and opportunities facing a new chair; strategy (eg, departmental priorities, mission balance); administration (eg, financial, operational); institutional reviews of chairs/departments; interaction with institutional leaders (eg, other chairs, deans, hospital leadership); fundraising; faculty management (eg, recruitment, retention, annual evaluations, productivity, dismissal); and personal issues (eg, work-life balance, stepping down, retirement). The Senior Fellows Group also has participated actively in essentially all Association of Pathology Chairs programs, committees, fundraising, and projects. The organized structure and function of the Senior Fellows Group has been of significant value to the membership of the Association of Pathology Chairs, as well as to the participating former chairs, and may provide a model for other academic organizations to utilize this important resource.

The Association of Pathology Chairs' Pathology Leadership Academy: Experience From the First 2 Years.

Leadership development and succession planning are critical to ensure continued strength of academic pathology. The Association of Pathology Chairs developed the Pathology Leadership Academy to prepare future academic leaders. The purpose of this report is to describe: (1) Pathology Leadership Academy's development and curriculum, (2) how Pathology Leadership Academy has met leadership development needs for individuals and academic departments in its first 2 years, (3) Pathology Leadership Academy's future directions based on program feedback. Results were analyzed from pre- and postprogram needs assessment surveys of pathology chairs and from evaluations from Pathology Leadership Academy participants in the first 2 years. Pathology Leadership Academy curriculum was developed from topics identified as priorities in the chairs' survey. Twenty-eight (90%) of 31 responding participants were very satisfied/satisfied with Pathology Leadership Academy. Of the 18 responding chairs who sent a participant to Pathology Leadership Academy, 11 (61%) reported that Pathology Leadership Academy met their faculty development goal. Of all responding chairs, 13 (32%) of 41 reported uncertainty as to whether Pathology Leadership Academy is meeting chairs' goals. Chairs reported that Pathology Leadership Academy provided value to their faculty through preparation for a future leadership role, enhancing skills for a current role, and enhancing understanding of opportunities and challenges in academic medicine. Most chairs (27/43, 66%) said Pathology Leadership Academy should be offered again; 13 (32%) of 43 were uncertain, and 1 (2%) of 43 said no. Initial experience of Pathology Leadership Academy is positive and promising and provides opportunity for leadership succession planning in academic pathology. Pathology Leadership Academy will use participant and chair feedback for ongoing curricular development to ensure topics continue to address major needs of academic pathology.

Report and Recommendations of the Association of Pathology Chairs' Autopsy Working Group.

Autopsy has been a foundation of pathology training for many years, but hospital autopsy rates are notoriously low. At the 2014 meeting of the Association of Pathology Chairs, some pathologists suggested removing autopsy from the training curriculum of pathology residents to provide additional months for training in newer disciplines, such as molecular genetics and informatics. At the same time, the American Board of Pathology received complaints that newly hired pathologists recently certified in anatomic pathology are unable to perform an autopsy when called upon to do so. In response to a call to abolish autopsy from pathology training on the one hand and for more rigorous autopsy training on the other, the Association of Pathology Chairs formed the Autopsy Working Group to examine the role of autopsy in pathology residency training. After 2 years of research and deliberation, the Autopsy Working Group recommends the following:Autopsy should remain a component of anatomic pathology training.A training program must have an autopsy service director with defined responsibilities, including accountability to the program director to record every autopsy performed by every resident.Specific entrustable activities should be defined that a resident must master in order to be deemed competent in autopsy practice, as well as criteria for gaining the trust to perform the tasks without direct supervision.Technical standardization of autopsy performance and reporting must be improved.The current minimum number of 50 autopsies should not be reduced until the changes recommended above have been implemented.

The Undergraduate Training in Genomics (UTRIG) Initiative: early & active training for physicians in the genomic medicine era.

Genomic medicine is transforming patient care. However, the speed of development has left a knowledge gap between discovery and effective implementation into clinical practice. Since 2010, the Training Residents in Genomics (TRIG) Working Group has found success in building a rigorous genomics curriculum with implementation tools aimed at pathology residents in postgraduate training years 1-4. Based on the TRIG model, the interprofessional Undergraduate Training in Genomics (UTRIG) Working Group was formed. Under the aegis of the Undergraduate Medical Educators Section of the Association of Pathology Chairs and representation from nine additional professional societies, UTRIG's collaborative goal is building medical student genomic literacy through development of a ready-to-use genomics curriculum. Key elements to the UTRIG curriculum are expert consensus-driven objectives, active learning methods, rigorous assessment and integration.