THIS month the Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust celebrated the launch of a new training school for pathologists at Wycombe Hospital.

Paul Leat discovers what the training school will bring to Wycombe and the role of the science in modern medicine.

MENTION the word pathology and for many of us the first image that comes to mind is Amanda Burton cutting up the dead body of a murder victim in TV show Silent Witness.

Through the media, pathologists are often seen solely as a branch of crime detection, providing police with the clues to help track down the latest killer.

However, Dr David Bailey, lead histopathologist at Wycombe Hospital, said this is a common misconception.

Dr Bailey said: "Whenever I ask someone what they think I do they say that I cut up dead bodies. Of course that is part of our job but it only makes up about ten per cent of our work. The rest of our time is spent in diagnosis."

Pathology is the study of the cause of disease through the examination of body tissue, and can help in the diagnosis of cancers, heart disease and with bowel screening.

Dr Bailey added: "Pathology plays a crucial role in almost every field of medicine. There is almost no department that does not come to us at some time."

By taking cross sections of tissue and looking at it under microscopes, pathologists learn to detect even the smallest defects that can help diagnose illness and in the case of post mortems establish a cause of death.

The new training school launched last Friday at Wycombe Hospital is the latest in a network of 11 training schools set up across the country by the Department of Health since 2001.

The first three pilot schools, including one in Southampton, proved a great success and greatly increased the intake of first year trainees in pathology.

At the launch ceremony on Friday, Dr Patrick Gallagher, reader in pathology at Southampton University Hospitals, said there had been concern in recent years about low levels of recruitment.

He said: "England and Wales have one of the highest post-mortem rates in the world and yet few of our pathology units were built to satisfactory standards."

Medical students were thought to be put off from the profession through a negative image in the media and the lack of human contact.

"In our profession we are surrounded by death perhaps more than anyone else," Dr Gallagher added.

The problems with the profession led the way for the Department of Health to introduce the training schools.

Each school takes on up to eight new students a year for a five year training programme, during which the trainees will experience hands-on the work of a consultant pathologist.

The Wycombe Primary Care Trust (PCT) histopathology training school is split between Wycombe Hospital and Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury.

The school opened four weeks ago and took on six first year students, split into two groups of three who will alternate between the two hospital sites.

Dr Bailey believes the school will bring great benefits to the PCT in Wycombe.

He said: "We are keen to fund the development of pathology in this trust and I think this training school will guarantee an improvement in the quality of pathology in our two hospitals.

"We will be able to attract more and better students to the department.

"Having the training school in this trust will, I hope, bring out the best of our senior staff as well."