| Accurate diagnosis is key to quality cancer care and to generating much of the data in cancer registries.1,2 In most sub-Saharan African countries, as in other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), varying standards of pathology training and the scarcity of a skilled pathology workforce have limited both access to as well as quality of cancer diagnosis and, in particular, the pathologic staging of cancer.1,2 To help address this gap in cancer diagnosis and staging, access to continuing professional development is a critical need for the anatomic pathology workforce in Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa (ECSA). We describe the findings of Improving Anatomic Pathology Services in Sub-Saharan Africa to Support Cancer Care, a 17-month research project funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, designed to determine which of three training options was the best approach to enhance the skills of anatomic pathologists to perform pathologic staging of four common cancers. Common approaches to continuing professional development and skill enhancement include lectures, workshops, online courses, or some combination thereof.3 These approaches are used by pathology professional societies around the world. On the other hand, formal casebased teaching (CBT) has not been traditionally used in pathology education and training, despite the fact that it is a well-accepted method for adult learning.4 Although pathologists, like other medical professionals, have always used cases as examples for teaching, this differs from formal CBT. With CBT, participants are provided with increasingly complex, real-life cases in a structured learning setting that allows them to develop analytical skills. Most CBT includes reading or other resources to help trainees understand the principles being learned. In many cases, CBT is a group activity, which is why CBT is embraced by many medical schools as a way to expose students in a structured way to different concepts they will encounter when they graduate. To compare approaches for training pathologists in pathologic staging of cancers, in this study, we evaluated three different approaches: traditional lectures, CBT, and a blended approach with short lectures followed by CBT. |
