Advancing Fellowship Training in Selective Pathology

Program requirements for Selective Pathology fellowships in the United States were established by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in 2011 to govern fellowships providing advanced training in surgical pathology, focused anatomic pathology, or focused clinical pathology. Selective Pathology entered the ACGME's Next Accreditation System in 2015 with the introduction of the Selective Pathology Milestones 1.0, a set of benchmarks for evaluating fellow progress in each of the 6 ACGME core competencies. In 2019, the ACGME convened a work group for a planned periodic update to these milestones.

To summarize changes to the Selective Pathology milestones.

The study design featured expert opinion and survey.

The Patient Care milestones for anatomic pathology-focused fellowships contain a renewed emphasis on both gross and microscopic examination, whereas for clinical pathology-focused fellowships, the emphasis is on interpretation of laboratory assays. The milestones for the non-Patient Care, non-Medical Knowledge competencies have been updated to a harmonized set of milestones designed to extend across all specialties and subspecialties. New to the milestones program is a supplemental guide that provides examples, suggested assessment tools, and references to aid in implementation. Public comments were supportive of the changes.

The Milestones 2.0 are set for implementation in July 2021. Updates in the new milestones are aimed at facilitating training and harmonizing evaluation across subspecialties.