Pathologists as Clinicians

Bruce Friedman makes a great post on Training Pathologists to be better clinicians.

Although I use the term clinician frequently in this blog, I discovered that I had some difficulty finding a definition for it that satisfied me. I finally hit on the following definition for clinical, which can also be used to define clinician: Pertaining to [the direct] observation and treatment of patients. In the light of this as well as my previous inclinations, I will resist the temptation to classify pathologists and radiologists as clinicians but rather classify them as diagnosticians who act as consultants to clinicians. It is these latter physicians who provide the direct care to patients.

The subject of Pathologists as doctors who treat patients comes up a lot in the hallways at Aperio.  There is a point of view that Pathologists are a sort of lab instrument; you ask them to perform a test, and they deliver the result, and that's it.  We reject this point of view.  There is an essentially subjective and emotional aspect to pathology, there is a human patient, a back story, treatment options, etc. which all must be considered, there is far more than simply using experience and pattern recognition to identify disease upon inspection of specimens.

Viewed from this perspective, digital pathology is a technology which helps pathologists to be doctors who treat patients.  And helping them to do so is most satisfying...