CAP TODAY Pathology/Laboratory Medicine/Laboratory Management
R. Bruce Williams, MD
July 2019—I attended our first CAP annual meeting and haven’t missed one since. Pathology is dynamic and complex, so our learning team is forever coming up with useful and meaningful ways to present new material. Everyone who is involved in any way wants to make our time in Orlando engaging and enjoyable. CAP19 will be the best ever.
R. Bruce Williams, MD
For example, last year a handful of Saturday courses were introduced at CAP18, such that the scientific programming started a day early to accommodate members with less flexible schedules. That went well. It went so well in fact that our intrepid CAP Curriculum Committee, chaired by Sarah M. Bean, MD, added six more courses this year on the first day, Sept. 21, and a full-day intensive on genitourinary pathology on the last day (Sept. 25). And because the committee is not only brave but also creative, it has recruited some of our best speakers for a 1.5-day laboratory professionals immersive (think actionable, experience-driven, science-fueled, big-picture team building).
Donna Hansel, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Pathology at Oregon Health & Science University and professor, OHSU School of Medicine, will moderate the genitourinary pathology course. Dr. Hansel has structured the content around practical, case-based presentations by five renowned genitourinary pathologists who will cover the management of prostate, kidney, bladder, penile, and testis specimens. Updated staging criteria will be presented, along with common and uncommon entities likely to be encountered in a general surgical pathologist’s daily practice.
An interview with Dr. Hansel is among the podcasts featuring CAP19 faculty that are embedded with course descriptions on the CAP19 website (www.capannualmeeting.org). The podcasts are a real asset when trying to sort through 86 courses taught by 140 faculty and providing up to 36.75 CME/SAM and 14.25 CE credits.
I hope everyone will attend our scientific plenary on the patient microbiome moderated by James Versalovic, MD, PhD, on Sunday morning and the special lecture on the evolution of molecular diagnostics presented Tuesday afternoon by Carl T. Wittwer, MD, PhD, a giant in the field.
Poster sessions Sunday through Tuesday will showcase selected research accepted for the CAP19 Abstract Program. Editors of the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine have selected more than 680 abstracts and case reports for presentation at CAP19; authors will be present to talk about their work during the first hour of each session. Please stop in to see the posters and talk with the authors, even if it does take a while to get through them all, what with bumping into friends you haven’t seen since CAP18. (Accepted abstracts and case studies will be published in a Web-only supplement to the September 2019 issue of Archives. The editors also selected five abstracts submitted by CAP junior members for the Top 5 Junior Member Abstract Program; cash awards will be presented to the top five junior member winners.)
The Sunday evening keynote will be presented by Jamie Heywood of PatientsLikeMe (www.patientslikeme.com), a novel research and peer support platform through which patients connect and share information about their treatments, symptoms, and outcomes. More than 600,000 patients representing 2,800 conditions have participated in the open platform, which empowers patients and gives unique insight to clinicians, providers, researchers, and the pharmaceutical industry.