So far, I consider the pathology rotation to be the most unique rotation among all the rotations that I’ve had in the past 10 months. As we are dealing with dead animals (aka performing necropsy) all day every day during this rotation, we can’t really screw up anything as nothing can be worse than death. Therefore, it’s mentally less stressful than other rotations. I’d like to point out that dealing with dead animals not only means less stress, it also means more responsibility as animals are sent to necropsy for either further investigation or confirmation of the cause of death. Occasionally the necropsy findings are involved in law case such as animal cruelty, poisoning, etc.
In addition to the necropsy part, I also like the way that we do case presentation in this rotation. At the end of every presentation that we make, we are required to draw a flowchart illustrating the disease process in great detail. By doing so, we get to familiarize ourselves more with the disease process (pathogenesis) and end up having better understanding and memorization of the disease. For the very first presentation that we did, we did a fake case that was made up. It’s interesting and challenging to actually make up a case. For example, interpreting the CBC or chemistry results is way easier than making up those numbers, as you need to think deeper and make sure they all make sense so that people who are reading them can follow the mental path that you have set.
Two more weeks to go and I am really looking forward to learning more in this rotation, which shows us a brand-new learning style!
