Autopsy Pathology Rotation - 4 months

This rotation is served at the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office and at the VA hospital in Mather. Teaching is under the direction of board-certified pathologists who assume the responsibility for directing the resident’s training in all areas of autopsy. Specifically, this includes demonstrating performance of a variety of prosection methods and autopsy techniques such as the Rokitansky method and organ block removal, brain cutting, and the development of the final autopsy report.

Residents perform a variety of medical autopsies under the supervision of the faculty. Medical students during their anatomic pathology elective participate in the prosection of the autopsy cases with the resident and attending. In addition, clinical teams are often present to observe the examination. Residents perform the examination, dictate all reports, and review microscopic slides for sign-out with the assigned faculty physician on the case. They are also taught how to formulate the clinicopathologic correlation for the final report.  Residents perform up to 10-15 autopsies each month.  

In addition to performing autopsies, the residents are expected to present at the Mortality and Morbidity conference and present an autopsy conference to the residents to show interesting autopsy findings followed by a discussion of the pathology.