Aim of
course
The Year 5 Pathology Course covers clinical pathology and aims to
give an understanding of the pathology of disease processes and use
of the pathology laboratory.
In Years 1 & 2, the Molecules,
Cells and Disease Theme, and in Graduate Entry, Microbiology & Infectious Disease, Immunology and general pathology Themes, provided an introduction to the cellular processes
of disease, which was continued in other Themes where pathology specific
to an understanding of specific Systems was introduced. Various PBL
topics in Years 1, 2 & 3 also included pathology, to varying extents.
Also, in Year 3, the pathological basis of several clinical conditions
was included. The material covered in Years 1, 2 & 3 therefore
underpins the course in Year 5.
At the end of this course, you will
be expected to:
- Demonstrate a basic knowledge of
the principles of haematology, chemical pathology, immunology, microbiology
and histopathology.
- Apply this pathological knowledge
to making a clinical diagnosis, formulating a treatment plan, and
monitoring patient progress and outcome.
- Understand the scientific basis
of medicine that underpins your knowledge of clinical practice.
- Be able to request appropriate laboratory
tests.
Understand the consequence of inappropriate sample taking.
- Interpret laboratory data in a clinical
context and apply this to your daily practice.
- Recognise pathological patterns
and be able to separate complex data into component parts.
- Understand the role of the pathology
laboratory as an integrated component of patient care, including
ethical and legal aspects.
The Year 5 attachments all comment
that by having the Pathology Course at the start of the year means
that students are better prepared for the attachments that follow,
have more understanding of the concepts and therefore cope better
with the clinical attachment.
Starting with the 2004-5 course, students were encouraged to write
EMQs from the session objectives as an aid to their learning. These
questions will be available but you will be expected to write more
questions.
Course
content
The course is predominately lecture-based but, in response to student feedback, we have increased the number of interactive sessions including small group tutorials, quizzes and CPCs (Clinico-Pathological Conferences).
| 1. |
Cardiovascular disease |
| 2. |
Respiratory disease COPD, cancer,
occupational lung disease and microbiology |
| 3. |
Gastrointestinal disease |
| 4. |
Liver disease – viral hepatitis,
cirrhosis and cancer and microbiology |
| 5. |
Investigation of endocrine disease
and pancreatic disorders |
| 6. |
Skin and Connective tissue disease |
| 7. |
Haemato-pathology, Lymphoreticular
disease, lymphoma and leukaemia |
| 8. |
Genitourinary disease – GMN,
infection, cancer – prostate and bladder and microbiology |
| 9. |
Gynaecological pathology |
| 10. |
Breast pathology |
| 11. |
CNS disease and microbiology |
| 12. |
Immune deficiencies and autoimmunity |
| 13. |
Acid base balance, lipids, electrolytes,
uric acid, calcium |
| 14. |
Microbiology – antibiotics |
| 15. |
Microbiology – viruses and fungi |
| 16. |
Ethics and law in pathology |
Course
guide
There are FOUR volumes to the Guide, one for each week
of the course. The Guides include complete learning objectives for each session, lecture notes, reading lists and examples of EMQ’s. The individual session handouts are provided in the order of delivery
of the lectures. The layout is such that you may remove pages to consolidate those
for a single subject (e.g. microbiology or histopathology) into separate
collections. All new materials will be posted on the Intranet as soon as they become available.
Assessment
and prizes
Formative examinations
Over the course of the year, three formative examinations will
be held: these are conducted in summative exam style using printed
answer sheets. The first is held at the end of the course, the second
immediately
after the Christmas/New Year break, and the final one in an early
week of the final attachment. For dates for the second and third
“mock”, please check the Intranet. For each of these “mocks”, you
will receive your scores after exam,
and you will be able to see your standing as compared to the rest
of the year.
Summative examination
The Examination is the Final Examination
in Pathology in the MB BS component of your Course. The question
format is of the Extended Matching Question type. It will be part of
the end-of-year examinations to be held in June 2012. The
examination will comprise 35 EMQs,
7 each from the different disciplines—Chemical Pathology, Haematology,
Histopathology, Immunology, Microbiology (including
virology) and there will be a medical ethics/law
component to at least one of the questions. The examination will last
3 hours. Examples of the format of the EMQ’s are given in the final session
and appear throughout
the Guide.
Distinctions in Clinical Science are
awarded for best performances in the Part 5 Pathology Examination. Prizes are
awarded for the top performances in each of the five disciplines,
and for the best overall performances in the Part 5 paper - see
the School of Medicine Prizes
page
Details of
the Examination, including Prizes, will
be located on
the
Year
5 Examinations site on the Intranet.
Course
evaluation
Along with all the other components of the medicine course, all formal
evaluation of the Pathology Course will be via SOLE. To assist you
in this, and given the large number of lectures in this course, we
have included a SOLE proforma in this Course Guide.
In the latest version of SOLE, you
will only need to enter data on a week at a time, and you can choose
which teachers you wish to comment on. You will ONLY need to make
ONE comment about each teacher or lecture, so SOLE will be MUCH easier
to use than previously. SOLE will go on-line every FRIDAY and stay
on-line until shortly after the end of the course. Please therefore
try and feedback each week on the Friday evening if possible, or at
least over the weekend. You can use SOLE on ANY computer in the world,
and do NOT need to use VPN.
We very much value the comments you
have about this course and towards the end of the second week
we will
give you the opportunity to provide feedback in open session. We
will also be asking for representatives to provide feedback in
open session at the end of the course.
Normal
values/Reference intervals
You should know the
normal values for Na, K, Urea, Creatinine and also Hb, White cells
and platelets. In exam questions, normal values for other investigations
will be provided and examples of these are shown in your Course
guide—See Volume 1 [Week 1] Guide p 48 for an example of a
set of patient values together with reference intervals for these
values.
Elsewhere in the
Guides there will examples of other questions which include reference
intervals.
EMQ examples
We have endeavoured to put in a few EMQs into the Study Guide but
there is a very large collection on Blackboard.
However, in order to give you the opportunity of participating
in a formative
exam, albeit in pseudo-exam type conditions, we will run a formative
exam on the last day of the course (29th July),
following
the 'Tropical
Day' and also on two other occassions later in the
Year, as described above.
You are also invited to write EMQs
to assist your learning experience. Details are here.
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