Message from the Director
The cornerstone of the surgical pathology fellowship at UVM Medical Center and the University of Vermont is the Provisional Diagnosis Service, or "hotseat." It is an exciting rotation in which the senior resident or fellow is responsible for providing provisional diagnoses and triage for all resident bench cases processed in the Surgical Pathology Division.
The hot seat is located in the hub of our sign out area directly across from the cutting room and histology and in the same suite with the attending staff, surgical pathology office, and Cytology Division. Hot seat rotations are each one month long because of the intensity of this service.
Previous fellows and residents who have rotated in this position find the experience to be enlightening and profoundly educational as they directly interact with clinicians, surgical pathology attendings, and mentor junior residents. The typical day starts with evaluation of routine and expedited biopsies followed by non-biopsy excision specimens. In the afternoon, the hot seat is responsible for intraoperative consultations together with one of the resident bench attendings. The frozen section room is immediately across the hall and adjacent to the routine cutting room.
The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine accessions approximately 35,000 surgicals, 4,500 non-gyn and fine needle aspirate cytology specimens, and over 60,000 gyn cytology specimens per year.
We are proudly participating in the Unified Approach and common recruitment timeline for surgical pathology and surgical pathology subspecialty fellowship programs.
