First year residents will take surgical pathology weeknight call starting on their second surgical pathology rotation with direct supervision provided by surgical pathology fellows and faculty. First year residents will not take any weekend call or any clinical pathology call. Second, third and fourth-year residents take surgical pathology call (on surgical pathology rotations), clinical pathology (CP) call and anatomic pathology/clinical pathology (AP/CP) call on the weekends.
Clinical pathology call (Monday through Thursday) consists of at-home-call every ten to twelve days. The resident can expect to receive questions and problems from any of CP services. For example, residents may be called to approve or deny requests for tests that are usually only done during the day or requests for platelets when the blood bank platelet stock is low. These types of calls often require the resident to contact the requesting physician and decide whether the request is justifiable or if another test or blood product would be more helpful. Rarely, residents on call must come into the hospital for emergent transfusion medicine therapeutic procedures.
AP/CP call is covered on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday by one resident each day. It consists of all those duties explained under CP call as well as weekend frozen section coverage (with faculty back up), checking the gross room for specimens, and consulting with clinical services on the weekend.