Rapid responses are electronic comments to the editor. They enable our users to debate issues raised in articles published on bmj.com. A rapid response is first posted online. If you need the URL (web address) of an individual response, simply click on the response headline and copy the URL from the browser window. A proportion of responses will, after editing, be published online and in the print journal as letters, which are indexed in PubMed. Rapid responses are not indexed in PubMed and they are not journal articles. The BMJ reserves the right to remove responses which are being wilfully misrepresented as published articles.
Dr Agbamu has spotted my error which was one of my poor composition.
I had not meant to suggest as my letter clearly suggests that there were
no pathologists in the United Kingdom doing autopsies, but rather that
that was the case locally.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests:
No competing interests
25 April 2010
Michael G Bamber
General practitioner
Colsterworth Medical Practice, Colsterworth, Lincolnshire NG33 5NJ
The picture is not yet quite as bleak as Michael Bamber paints.
The draft "Curriculum for specialty training in histopathology" published in November 2009 http://www.rcpath.org/resources/pdf/histocurriculumdraftnov09.pdf, if accepted in its current form, will allow histopathology trainees to follow a route that will result in a Part 2 FRCPath examination without an autopsy component. These trainees will still have had to complete 60 autopsies in their first three years (compared to 100 autopsies over five years for current trainees). There will still be an option for trainees to continue with autopsies and to sit a Part 2 FRCPath examination with an autopsy component.
As somebody who still has a few years to go until he is 50 and who also does autopsies, I am able to refute Dr Bamber's second assertion that "no consultant under the age of 50 does necropsies", but my anecdotal evidence is at variance with the college on how many trainees will choose the Part 2 FRCPath with autopsy. I believe that within 5 years, there will be a shortfall of histopathologists willing to make a post-mortem examination at the behest of a coroner.
On being 50
Dr Agbamu has spotted my error which was one of my poor composition.
I had not meant to suggest as my letter clearly suggests that there were
no pathologists in the United Kingdom doing autopsies, but rather that
that was the case locally.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests