Pathologists: Rise Up!

Lija Joseph: Visible pathologists should be involved in direct patient care, either in the form of "pathology clinics', or as direct consultants as patients navigate the complexity of their diagnosis. This will empower the patients and bring professional fulfillment. The Cures Act 2021 and access to the internet makes the “universe” poised to achieve this goal.

Shahla Masood: Pathologists should make every effort to ensure that patients understand their role in their treatment and outcome. This can be achieved through social media – telling stories of patients who have benefited from this expertise. Measures must also be taken to make sure that our clinical colleagues respect our contributions in enhancing their ability to find the right options for immediate therapy and the follow-up management of their patients.

James Payne: I have written and spoken extensively about the need for all laboratorians to assist in boosting the profile of laboratory medicine. This includes reaching out to young people in schools and community organizations, along with building allies in the political arena (not just proclamation requests during lab week). Every person in the United States (if not the world) should know about medical laboratory careers as well as they know about MD specialties. We need Google searches providing easy resources about laboratory medicine careers for anyone thinking about science or medicine. Politicians are well known leaders in your communities and can be advocates for our career paths if we just let them know what it is really like to work in a lab and how the laboratory makes modern medicine possible. This can be done with tours where they are being “trained” on how to work in a laboratory. In each case we need to actively assist those around us to know who we are and how extremely valuable our work is to their health.

Another important step lies in providing high school students with practical experience. Students can explore medical laboratory careers through shadowing experience and high school medical laboratory programs like mine that teach laboratory skills while they determine which career is best suited for them. We so often hear about people going through 4 years of college to find out in their first job that they hate this career. Paper career resources like flyers or posters are great for initial introduction and exploration into a specific career field. Even better are videos showing the careers that are possible. 

I believe it's crucial that we immerse middle and high school students in the laboratory environment so they can figure out if this is where they belong and enter college with a more informed decision. At minimum, students should be shadowing in labs and, if possible, attending extensive laboratory training programs like my public high school Medical Laboratory Assisting and Phlebotomy program. The more laboratory experience they have, the more confident they will be moving forward in their career.

Carla L. Ellis: A critical topic in raising the profile of pathology is increased communication about our vital role in patient care. As laboratorians, we obviously know how important our role in patient care is and understand that the lab saves lives. However, many other medical specialties continue to see pathology and laboratory medicine as ancillary components to patient care, despite their critical need for our results to make patient care decisions. Complicating this is the lack of understanding of laboratory work flows that include quality care, assurance and improvement methods, and numerous internal processes to ensure our results are as timely as possible but, more importantly, accurate. These topics should be a mainstay of communication at a national level for the visibility of other medical specialties and to further appreciate and understand how crucially important our roles are.

David Wells: Pathology needs to be seen as the key that unlocks efficient and timely healthcare. This means it needs to be on the radar of policy makers and governments. It isn’t just a case of raising awareness, it is more about presenting solutions to the problems we experience in healthcare delivery. Presenting solutions to governments, as the experts, using accessible language and clear examples is how we will consolidate pathology as the underpinning health speciality for the whole of health. Get pathology right, get healthcare right.

Melody Boudreaux Nelson: In my opinion, thriving in a value-based healthcare environment will require pathology and laboratory medicine to change our taxonomy from service nomenclature toward care-based language. There should be an intentionality around the messaging on how we distinctly care for patients and educating those we interact with on how the laboratory intersects the familiar parts of their healthcare journey. Such campaigns have revolutionized public understanding and recruitment for both nursing and pharmacy. I’d like to see a similar national advertising effort for pathology and laboratory medicine. 

Nicole Jackson: Many of us are already advocating for the field – we need to insert ourselves into spaces historically devoid of our presence, including social media, medical schools lacking associated pathology departments or residency programs, colleges, and grade schools. We need direct interaction to show how vital and fulfilling our work is to society and people’s loved ones. I cannot overemphasize the importance of being active and engaged on social media as a tool for workforce development; it is the space in which most of our future workforce lives!

Our future peers grew up with smartphones and do not know a life without social media. I have had multiple mothers reach out to me via social media, hoping to connect me with their child about a career in forensic pathology. The Research Course Director at Meharry Medical College contacted me via social media, and out of that interaction emerged a virtual Autopsy Journal Club and our Summer Autopsy & Laboratory Research Fellowship in direct partnership with Meharry – a medical school without a pathology residency program. None of this would have happened without me having a presence on social media. You are limiting your power to connect with our future workforce if you are not at least on one app!

Syed T. Hoda: Our work speaks for ourselves, but we really need to make sure our work is heard. Be loud, proud, and bold in your discussion about what we do outside of the people in our own specialty. Teach medical students and residents like you mean it, not because you are checking a box. Talk to doctors, patients, and people as much and whenever you can about the diseases we diagnose; and offer them real-world understanding with your robust knowledge about the subject matter. The era of the "quiet pathologist" should be declared over!