Autopsy Education and Rate: Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Autopsy training is required for board certification by the American Board of Pathology and may be affected by autopsy rate. It is unclear whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected autopsy education and rate. Prior to the pandemic, our autopsy gross organ review lectures at the Brown University pathology residency program were in-person and used a detective style to discover the pathological lesions followed by an integrated discussion of anatomic and clinical pathology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these lectures became remote and there was a noticeable impact on the involvement and responsiveness of the audience compared to in-person teaching. Certain qualities of face-to-face teaching can be difficult to be reproduced through virtual teaching, including the detective style to look for pathological lesions and the ability to palpate lesions from gross specimens. Our results showed that the autopsy case number increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the overall autopsy rate did not significantly change.