CAP Review and Forecast: Education 2024/2025

Robert Johnson:

Cutting edge training, education about new policies, and programs to develop future pathologists. These are at the top of the education agenda at the College of American Pathologists. This is your CAP review and forecast focused on education in 2024 and 2025. I'm Robert Johnson. Thank you for joining us for this conversation about education, accomplishments, and priorities with Dr. Kalisha Hill, chair of the CAP's Council on Education and a member of the CAP's Board of Governors.

Dr. Kalisha Hill:

As chair of the Council on Education, I'm very proud of the work that we do providing continuing medical education for our members. We have a cohort of educational opportunities, both mobile as well as in person throughout all of our activities within the CAP.

Robert Johnson:

From your position as chair of the Education Council, what's worth noting about the council's work last year? What are a few of the council's biggest accomplishments?

Dr. Kalisha Hill:

I am very proud of our educational programs as well as our undergraduate medical education project team, which was born from the Future Pathologist Initiative for our educational programs. We had excellent material for our members to utilize. We had ultrasound, fine needle aspiration, which was a two day workshop for pathologists. We also had courses on preparing for the LDTs and those rules that are coming. The CAP has been very staunch on their position related to the FDA LDTs final rule, and we are doing everything we can to oppose that, but at the same time, prepare our members for what will come. We also have education programs for CLIA laboratory directors. This was very important as there was a deadline on December 28th in 2024. So this program satisfied the nuclear training requirements. We also have upcoming Genitourinary Reporting Insights. This is a flip classroom concept that we developed in 2024, and this program will be coming in 2025.

And then we have, of course, our pathology destination CME. We had one last year, and we have another one coming up this year that we planned in 2024, and that's our Pathology on the Coast. So very much looking forward to our members, enjoying all the educational programs that we have for them. The second item, the undergraduate medical education project team is a very important initiative that I'm very proud of. This focus in 2025 will be experiential exposure to pathology and clerkships. So we have to develop a toolkit that can be utilized by medical schools to have all of their students exposed to pathology, whether they choose pathology as their specialty or if they choose another specialty, but really need to understand the value of laboratory medicine and pathologists in caring for patients.

Robert Johnson:

Healthcare at large is having a hard time finding people who want to enter the field. It sounds like the same is true for pathology.

Dr. Kalisha Hill:

Absolutely. The desire to have future physicians and specifically future pathologists is key to us continuing the care. I personally work in a rural area and it is difficult to recruit, so we need to make sure that we have a pool of residents that are coming out into the workforce that are able to fulfill the needs of academic programs as well as private practice programs in communities like mine.

Robert Johnson:

I suspect that work will continue into the new year, but what are the priorities of the council in 2025?

Dr. Kalisha Hill:

Absolutely. We want to prepare our members so that they can understand the impact of the FDA's LDT Final Rule. There will be a webinar series and many webinars are upcoming, and we would welcome members' feedback, making sure that these webinars are meeting your needs so that we can have all of our pathologists be prepared for what's to come.

Robert Johnson:

Thinking about members who may not be as engaged or maybe don't even know how to plug into all of the activities going on with the council, how can they get connected? How do they find a role, a way to contribute if they're interested?

Dr. Kalisha Hill:

I encourage our members to access our webinars for the LDT rules. They are available on the CAP website to register. They also will be going out by email. And when you participate in those webinars, please give feedback so that we can ensure that you have all the information required to meet the rules expectations. And of course, we are always excited to have additional future pathologist champions. So on the CAP website, you literally can search for future pathologist champions and fill out the form to become a champion. This group meets quarterly and we share best practices on how we can impact our own local communities to recruit our students into pathology.

Robert Johnson:

Read more in the episode notes. That's where you'll find links to everything mentioned today. This has been your CAP review and forecast focused on education in 2024 and 2025. In the days ahead, we'll visit with other CAP council chairs about their work and what's coming up this year. For the College of American Pathologists, this is Robert Johnson. Have a great day.