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“If it works, it’ll increase the flexibility in when and where screening is done,” said Plavnicky. Right now, the process of slide examination is laborious. Each slide has to be physically moved from a prep area to a cytotech, then to a pathologist, and finally placed in a storage area. Going digital removes some of these (literal) moving parts.
“Now we’re limited to where we can sign these out because the scope has to be connected to the imager,” he said. “That would go away with this system because it’s linked to a server accessible anywhere.”
As a longtime cytotech who spends many hours at the scope, he said the prospect of going digital is a big shift. But it’s not as big of a leap as you’d think.
“It feels strange in a field that revolves around microscopy. Not that it’s going away,” he said, pointing directly at the microscope within the machine itself. “The technology is not necessarily removing it. It’s removing the way it’s utilized.”
FOCUS ON FACULTY
of the Finger Lakes year-round.
Clinically speaking, autopsy and neuropathology are incredibly diverse subspecialties that require a vast pool of knowledge, and Bharadwaj is quick to point out the low threshold for consulting each other among the faculty. He says working in such a supportive and collaborative environment is very gratifying. “No matter how long you’ve been a pathologist, something new will always come to you–something that doesn’t fit into any of the boxes,” he said. “I find that very exciting.”
When he isn’t on service or conducting research, Bharadwaj enjoys teaching medical students as well as Pathology and Ophthalmology residents. His future goals are to expand his research lab, which is currently running basic research with fruit flies, and hopefully pursue translational studies with human tissue in the future.
He is married to Shilpa Vyas, M.D., a radiation oncologist at Rochester Regional. They live in Pittsford with their son, Aarav, 7. Outside of work, his hobbies include photography, spending time outdoors and traveling with his family. “My other passion is reading, mostly fiction,” he says. He enjoys both classic and contemporary literature.
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Our department is a wonderful melting pot of folks from diverse and different backgrounds. We can all look around our workplace and realize that our colleagues often come from different backgrounds, or hold different views from ourselves. These differences make us better, giving us a chance to see the world from a different perspective and strengthen the care of our patients.
I find that our students tend to encourage us to grow and develop as we consider others. So often in medicine we learn disease processes based upon the archetypal presentation in the archetypal patient. But so very often, this is not who we encounter. In my work with the medical school, I find that it is often the medical students who point out when we may have missed the mark, challenging us to check our assumptions and biases. And for this I am appreciative. Driven by student and faculty input, our medical school has recently debuted an audit tool that provides suggestions for how to assess if educational materials are free of stereotypes, overgeneralizations, or biases. For any who are interested, I would be glad to share this helpful guide.
And within our own departmental training programs it
is very easy to encounter students who grew up far from Rochester where they now make their home. Learning from these trainees should be an opportunity for all. Research would suggest that our differences only make us stronger and can even give us a competitive advantage. Our diversity extends as far as how we learn and grow academically. An interesting trend is starting to take hold in resident education: moving from time-based to competencybased medical education. Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) essentially boil down to what tasks or responsibilities can be handed over to a trainee once they have Jennifer Findeis-Hosey, M.D. demonstrated that they have the right set of knowledge and skills. As one can imagine, not everyone will reach competency in the same amount of time, and this is ok. Realizing there are a multitude of different ways to learn and approach a problem is important in academic medicine. It is up to us to reach our learners at the middle point, maintaining rigor while being accommodating. It is amazing to think about all the ways we are different from each other, but still come together, learn from each other, and provide medicine of the highest order.
