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A laboratory physician uses a high-power microscope to view biopsied tissue for signs of disease.

Pathology Residency

Help patients improve their quality of life. A Geisinger Pathology residency will show you how.

About us

You want to choose the right residency program — and we’re committed to helping you find it.

Ready for a comprehensive, high-quality and personally rewarding experience to prepare yourself for a career in medicine? The pathology program at Geisinger awaits.


Zachary Hoffer, MD, program director

Conrad Schuerch, MD

Follow us on social media

Twitter:
@GeisingerPath

Instagram:
@geisingerpathology


Program highlights

Geisinger’s Division of Laboratory Medicine is thrilled to announce the reestablishment of our pathology residency program, which reopened in July 2018. We admit two first-year residents each year to this ACGME-accredited residency that features a new unique AP/CP curriculum.

We designed our program to help residents like you function as diagnosticians and diagnostic consultants in the context of modern multidisciplinary practice. A residency in pathology will prepare you for laboratory leadership roles and provide you with exposure to management experiences in our multihospital laboratory system. Because the practice of pathology and healthcare in general continues to become more dependent on informatics skills, your residency will place special emphasis on informatics training.

Additionally, your residency’s four-year curriculum will integrate anatomic and clinical pathology. Your first five months will cover a broad framework of knowledge, orienting you to the profession and basic working skills, as well as prepare you to function and learn in subspecialty rotations that follow. Learn more about the curriculum in the designated section below.

Build the healthcare delivery system of tomorrow

Geisinger’s Division of Laboratory Medicine is organized as a single company that provides standardized and integrated laboratory services to 10 hospitals, 130 clinics and other facilities. Our core clinical laboratory in Danville performs more than 5 million tests per year. Anatomic pathology, centralized for the entire system, handles more than 80,000 surgical pathology, 50,000 cytology and 60 autopsy cases per year. We have 32 pathologists and four PhD doctoral scientists among our staff.

Our laboratory division is known for its leading laboratory integration model and rationalization in support of a large health system. Program faculty members are significant contributors in immunohistochemistry, microbiology and laboratory informatics. Our beautiful new laboratory building is equipped with the latest automated technologies in anatomic pathology and clinical laboratories. Our department has modern teaching facilities that house the residency program along with our cytopathology, dermatopathology and clinical informatics fellowships.

Geisinger Medical Center is located in the tranquil Susquehanna River Valley, which offers many outdoor recreational opportunities. Several universities in nearby towns provide opportunities for cultural events, while the major eastern cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., are all within a 2.5- to 4-hour drive.


Curriculum

Click for the 2023 Pathology Residency curriculum (PDF).

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A message from our program director

Thank you for viewing our pathology residency website. I hope you find it helpful as you consider where to apply for training. If you’re wondering what a pathology residency is like, this is a great place to start. 

Restarting our residency program in 2018 has given us the opportunity to create something entirely new. We were able to build an environment that would best serve our residents and further their education.  

As a faculty, we laid out the following principles to drive our pathology program:

  • Pathologists should receive broad training in both anatomic and clinical pathology. Together, these two areas will help you understand disease pathogenesis. A consultant in renal, pulmonary, liver, GI or other subspecialties should use both anatomic and clinical pathology information to reach certain diagnostic conclusions and speak to all the laboratory aspects of disease in multidisciplinary conferences. Genetics, molecular pathology and hematopathology fall inseparably into anatomic and clinical pathology, which is why we integrate anatomic and clinical pathology curricula as much as possible.
  • Laboratory medicine should play an important role in improving healthcare and decreasing its cost. Pathologists must understand the new paradigm of functioning in integrated health systems. They should be prepared to lead their laboratories in support of efficient and high-quality healthcare. In our program, we emphasize leadership and management, involving residents in systemwide committees, quality initiatives and formal leadership training. As a resident, you will gain experience in point-of-care testing, clinic sites and small and large hospital settings.
  • Residents must emerge as confident anatomic pathologists. Early on, you‘ll be assigned to read cases independently and create surgical pathology reports that will be reviewed by the attending pathologist and released as electronic medical records.
  • To be effective in the next generation, pathologists need facility, skills and practical understanding of informatics. Our department is well equipped, has a sophisticated IT support staff and continues to creatively advance the field of laboratory informatics. We give special attention to IT training in our program.
  • Research, publication and presentation experience is important. We offer many clinical research opportunities within our department, although basic research opportunities are limited. As a resident, you will be minimally required to present three research abstracts and write one paper for publication during your four-year training.

Ours is among the best pathology residency programs in the country. We invite you to come find out why.

– Zachary Hoffer, MD
Program Director

Zachary Hoffer, MD
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