National Pathology Week 2024 – highlighting pathology is vital

National Pathology Week 2024 ran from 4 to 10 November and our theme, ‘Pathology is Vital’, inspired a variety of events around the UK and online.

National Pathology Week (NPW) is our annual celebration of pathology, when we spotlight the important contribution pathologists make to healthcare. In this article, we look back at the highlights of NPW 2024.

Pathology Alliance collaboration

NPW ran from 4 to 10 November 2024. For the first time, NPW was delivered in a collaborative way by the Pathology Alliance – 10 organisations including the College, who are working together to discuss, collaborate, and promote pathology to government, the NHS, the private sector, industry and the public.

Current Pathology Alliance members are the:

The theme for NPW 2024 was ‘Pathology is Vital’ and we invited College members, pathology teams, and our stakeholders to use the hashtags #PathologyWeek and #PathologyIsVital to show their support on social media.

Joint online event: ‘Pathology myths and misconceptions’

On 4 November, the College worked with 5 of the other Pathology Alliance organisations to deliver a joint online event, ‘Pathology Myths and Misconceptions’. Aimed primarily at undergraduates and foundation doctors, but open to all, the event attracted 300 people and featured 9 talks and 11 speakers. Dr Suzy Lishman CBE hosted the webinar, and she opened the event with some audience polls including ‘What does pathology mean to you?’ and ‘True or false – your hair and nails continue to grow after you die’.

The specialty speakers, each representing one of the Pathology Alliance organisations, then covered a range of specialty areas and dispelled a range of commonly held myths about pathology, including ‘AI will replace pathologists’ and ‘Taking antibiotics won’t cause any harm’. The event recording has been used to create a series of videos with a different myth being explored in each one. You can watch these on our YouTube channel.

NPW 2024 Myths and misconceptions.PNG — **300 people attended the 'Myths and misconceptions' online event.**

Engaging online audiences with new digital content

New content on the RCPath’s careers pages was shared on social media during NPW. These featured new images taken at labs around the UK, and 15 new careers ‘profiles’, including clinical biochemistry, haematology and veterinary pathology. You can see all the specialty profiles here.

As part of NPW, the College also coordinated a joint social media campaign with Lab Tests Online UK’s funding organisations. We worked with RCPath Trustee and Consultant Haematologist, Dr Shubha Allard and Principal Clinical Biochemist, Rebecca Powney (also a Lab Tests Online Board member) to develop engaging quote cards featuring different tests so that 1 test per day could be featured on X. The RCPath, the IBMS and the Association for Laboratory Medicine all posted the quote cards and accompanying text on their respective X accounts.

NPW 2024 LTOL tweet.png — **The College, IBMS and the Association for Laboratory Medicine posted quote cards** **to engage with audiences online.**

Joint educational webinar with Roche Diagnostics

The College worked in partnership with one of our Corporate Members, Roche Diagnostics, to deliver an educational webinar, ‘From Bench to Bedside’ on 8 November 2024 as part of NPW. As a purely educational event, the webinar did not include any mention of Roche products or technologies. The webinar explored how greater collaboration between industry and academia can help accelerate frontline use of new diagnostic technologies. The concept of the event was put forward by representatives from Roche, and the College then recruited appropriate speakers and promoted the event to members and stakeholders. RCPath President, Dr Bernie Croal opened the event and took part in the panel discussion and Q&A.

The other expert panellists were:

Dr Nick Brown, Consultant Medical Microbiologist
Professor Zane Jaunmuktane, Consultant Neuropathologist
Dr Ian Godber, Consultant Clinical Scientist.

The speakers discussed 3 different disease areas – antimicrobial resistance and sepsis, Alzheimer's and dementia, and heart disease. Each speaker covered:

the scale of the problem (UK focus)
what role diagnostic technologies can play in relieving the burden
why it is taking so long for diagnostic innovations to reach the NHS
a call to action to help accelerate frontline use of new tests.

Around 270 attendees joined the webinar live and many more registered so we have shared the recording of the event with those who could not attend on our YouTube channel.

Feedback from those who attended was overwhelmingly positive. Attendees were asked to rate how useful they found the webinar. The majority answered that they had found the webinar useful, rating the event 4/5 or 5/5. Attendees also provided comments on the event. One remarked, “Thank you for organising these events, very insightful” and another said “Excellent speakers and a well put together webinar. Thank you.”

We plan to run more educational webinars in partnership with industry next year.

Member-led events

A variety of member-led events took place throughout the week, from workshops on topics including ‘Objects and Emotions in Medical Museums’ to career guidance events like Path to Success 2024. You can find out more about these events in our news post round-up. We supported members with their events around the UK, sending them careers booklets and branded materials to share. We also highlighted their events on our website. Thank you to all members and their teams who organised something for NPW. We appreciate your help in highlighting that ‘Pathology is Vital’.