National Pathology Week (NPW) 2023 runs from 19 to 25 June. Our theme this year is ‘Pathologists and Patients’ and we’re supporting pathology teams around the UK and beyond to get involved and highlight the work they do to prevent, diagnose and treat disease.

Pathology teams play a key role in patient care – from analysing routine blood tests for patients with diabetes to diagnosing rare cancers and other conditions. Check out our careers pages to find out about all 17 pathology specialties and watch our journey of a sample videos to learn more about the different people involved when you have a blood test or biopsy.   

You don’t have to be a member of the College to get involved – we’re also keen to support other activity organisers including teachers, librarians, scout and youth group leaders. 

Below are some top tips and links to our ‘pick-up-and-go’ activity and event-planning resources. 

Getting started with your event-planning

Check out our extensive range of guidance for event organisers and order some of our free branded materials and careers resources. Our guides for event organisers include top tips on event-planning and steps for running successful online events.  

You can also download the NPW 2023 logos, poster templates and email signatures from the NPW page.  Please do use our Pathologists and Patients 'ident' where appropriate (e.g. on hand-outs, posters, flyers). 

 

Think about your audience

National Pathology Week offers a great opportunity to highlight what pathology is and how it plays a central role in everyone’s health and in the healthcare system. Whether you’re planning an information stall in your hospital aimed at staff from non-pathology departments, or a hands-on activity for your local school, we have lots of resources that can help.

A great place to start is to think about what key message(s) you want to get across to your target audience. Many of our resources such as ‘Incredible You’ and our 'Heart of Healthcare' art activities are suitable for all ages and backgrounds and others have been devised with more specific audiences in mind. For example, our Medical Ethics Discussion Workshop is aimed primarily at sixth form students, and our Disease Detectives activity pack has been designed for cub scout leaders to run with cub groups aged 7 to 11. 

Use our tried-and-tested activity guides to highlight the role of pathologists in patient care

Our extensive range of activity resources cover many of the 17 pathology specialties.

• If you’re a histopathologist, why not plan a Living Autopsy event. The video guide to running this popular event is presented by its creator, Dr Suzy Lishman CBE.
• If you’re a haematologist or medical microbiologist, our Blood and Bugs activities offer a range of hands-on activities that explore your specialties and highlight how practices have changed since the First World War.
• And if you’re a chemical pathologist, check out our fun activities, Urine Trouble and What does your poo say about you? 
• We’ve also got activities related to veterinary pathology and our Incredible You colouring resources cover all 17 of our specialites and offers a great way to run a low-key and low-cost activity. 

 

If you’re a teacher

If you’re a teacher, many of our resources indicate curriculum links and many don’t require any specialist equipment – check out our ‘Choose your own pathology adventure’, 'Viruses and Vaccines' and ‘Split your genes’ activity packs. Our 'What is a pathologist?' animation and many of the other videos on our YouTube channel are a great resource to use to introduce pathology-themed enrichment sessions.

If you'd like to involve a pathologist in your NPW event, get in touch and we will do our best to link you up with one of our members in your area who is willing to volunteer. We recommend doing this sooner rather than later as pathologists work on 6-week rotas.  

 

Register your event and share your success

If you plan an event that is open to the public or patients, please register it here. We will then add it to our public events page. Please also include your personal or employers' Twitter handles on the webform when you register your event so we can tag you when we tweet about NPW events that are happening around the UK. 

If you take photos on the day, please do gain consent in advance, using the photography consent forms on our organisers’ page and then share what you’ve been up to on social media. If you’re posting on Twitter please tag us @RCPath and use the #PathologyWeek and #PathologistsAndPatients hashtags. You can also use these hashtags if you post photos of your event on Instagram. 

Watch this space for news of College-led NPW events. 

Get in touch with the public engagement team on [email protected] if you need help