Incorporating Virtual Pathology Slides and Instructor Simulation Tools in Pathology Resident Training and Histology Education
Authors: Stewart Ian F. , Moore Brian E. , Lee Lisa MJ. 
Published: June 2021

Since its emergence in the 1990s, virtual microscopy (VM) has been replacing optical microscopy (OM) in undergraduate medical education, a trend fueled by the wave of medical curricular change that reduced basic sciences contact hours while increasing clinical integration. While VM has consistently been shown to increase teaching efficiency and accessibility, visual literacy acquisition and diagnostic competency in histology and histopathology still require an instructional encounter with an expert; a critical feature most VM systems lack. Further, despite the emphasis on clinical integration in health sciences curricula, few VM platforms feature integrated normal and pathological tissue collections. This may be due to most graduate medical education in pathology still using OM as the primary resident training modality, although residents are assessed using VM. Consequently, little literature examines the usage and value of VM in graduate medical education. With the recent FDA approval of a whole‐slide imaging (WSI) system for routine diagnostics in pathology, graduate medical education may see a sweeping adoption of VM in the near future. Thus, this study aims to examine the educational value of incorporating VM with instructor simulation tools into residency training; and to determine the effects of incorporating clinical VM content in normal histology education. Neuropathological glass tissue slides were digitized by a WSI system, then the files were processed and formatted for access via a custom web‐based VM app (http://LeesHistology.com) with instructor simulation tools. To mimic instructional interactions with an expert, each virtual slide was annotated to highlight characteristic pathological features along with a general overview of the pathology at hand. An additional instructor simulator tool featured timed quizzes with immediate feedback on the virtual tissues, designed to mimic the back‐and‐forth question and answer driven interactions between the expert and the trainee. A neuropathologist validated the accuracy of the annotations and quizzes on the neuropathology VM slides, which were then made available to all pathology residents, and first‐year graduate students enrolled in a histology course. The educational value of the resource was assessed using pre‐test/post‐test comparison before and after the neuropathology VM exposure. A survey was conducted following the post‐test to gauge the users' perceived value of the neuropathology VM and their preference for training modalities. Preliminary data suggest a positive effect of the annotated pathologic VM in resident training, consistent with positive impacts reported in undergraduate medical education. The exposure to neuropathology VM sets during the histology course also had positive effects on graduate students' interest and motivation for learning histology. The outcomes of this study may have implications in longitudinal curricular design in histology and pathology that can span undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.