National Pathology Week is our annual celebration of pathology, when we highlight the important contribution pathologists make to healthcare. Working in partnership with pathologists and laboratory scientists across the UK, our programme of events and activities aims to engage people of all ages, and improve public awareness and understanding of how pathologists and scientists diagnose disease.

National Pathology Week (NPW) 2018 ran from 5 – 11 November. You can check out the highlights by searching #pathologyweek on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

We launched lots of exciting new resources to support our members and supporters to run their own events and activities this year, and to engage members and the public online. We also ran some of our own events and put the spotlight on careers in pathology in a number of ways.

A few of the highlights from last year

Careers and Ideas: Integrating medicine and scientific research, a day of talks and networking for medical and biomedical undergraduates took place on 7 November in Nottingham.

We broadcast a pathology careers talk by retired haematologist, Dr Lorna Williamson, live on our Facebook page during NPW to engage online audiences, particularly school students and undergraduates.

A public lecture event with Professor John Oxford took place on 8 November at Centre of the Cell in London, with over 100 people attending. Professor Oxford is an eminent Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, working in virology and his talk focused on the global flu pandemic of 1918.

Resources launched for NPW 2018

We heard about some fantastic NPW events members ran around the UK using ideas from our new and existing resources! Many also took advantage of our lovely new promotional materials. We hope our members and supporters will find these latest additions to our resource library below useful for running events at any time of the year, not just for National Pathology Week!

• Four video interviews with consultants from different specialties were launched during NPW 2018, as part of our focus on pathology careers this year. They’ve been hugely popular, and widely shared on social media. Many thanks to those consultants involved in creating them. Watch the full interviews on YouTube.

• Our Living Autopsy video guides and lecture video offer ideas and guidance on how to run your own public event about post mortems. Likewise, if you're thinking of putting on workshop-style event for sixth formers, visit the Your Body Your Consent page for the full event guide.

• Check out our brand new activity pack ‘Pathology for Life’, which is packed full of easy hands-on activity ideas to help you explore prevention, diagnosis and treatment in fun and engaging ways with diverse audiences.
• Our new range of quizzes, presentations and our ‘What is a pathologist?’ animation offer fun and easy ways to engage a wide range of audiences.

Social media

Our ‘what is a pathologist’ animation reached 48,000 people across social media channels, with 10,000 views on Facebook alone. This short animation quickly and aptly explains what it means to be a pathologist and can be used for a wide range of audiences.

We also had several entries for our ’#SecretsOfTheLab’ competition which asked pathologists and scientists to share a fascinating fact about their work. You can find out who won in our blog.

Save the date!

This year’s National Pathology Week marks the 10^th anniversary from the first National Pathology Week in 2008. Thank you to everyone who took part. Watch this space for what’s coming up for National Pathology Week 2019 which will take place during 4-10 November 2019.