Tracing the Cellular “Life Cycle” of Medical Education: Histology as a Theme in Medical Education

As students pass through the various phases of their “life cycle” in medical education—from undergraduate or post‐baccalaureate student to medical student to residency training and beyond as a healthcare practitioner—cellular structure and function underlie a thorough understanding of mechanisms of disease and are recognized as appropriate launching‐off points to explore the subjects of pathology and therapeutic interventions. Starting in undergraduate and post‐baccalaureate education, students are exposed to cellular structure and function as a corollary to physiology. Research conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in anticipation of the Medical Colleges Admissions Test (MCAT®) redesign in 2015 highlighted the importance of histology, cellular physiology, and molecular biology—and the connections between these disciplines—as necessary for success in medical curricula of the twenty‐first century (AAMC MR5 Committee, November 2011). So what role does histology play, then, in medical curricula themselves? As also discussed by the other members of this panel, recognition of histology as a physical correlate of proper cellular function permits the identification of morphologic changes as correlates of cellular dys function. Indeed, it is only through the assimilation of a paradigm of “normal” that the student can distinguish “abnormal” and apply or infer the effects of disease states in tissues. Finally, as only a small minority of graduating medical students will select the fields of Anatomic or Clinical Pathology as their career paths, how does histology remain relevant for practitioners during and after graduate medical training? Exploration of analytical and post‐analytical communication between diagnostician and clinician highlights several of these key roles of histology (and pathology) in medical communication and in the discourse of disease. These include improving classification and nomenclature of neoplasms; providing rapid on‐site cytologic diagnoses; and carefully choosing language to trigger or eschew specific interventions, improving patient safety. In these myriad ways, cellular histology (though perhaps often “hidden” behind the microscope) remains relevant throughout the life cycle from student to practitioner.