Forensic Pathology training at USF is conducted by the faculty at the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner Department, near the USF campus. Hillsborough County has a population base of 1.2 million, encompasses 1072 square miles, and has its seat in the City of Tampa. The County performs 2,000 death investigations per year, 1,430 of which involve autopsies.

Mission and Emphasis:

The mission of the program is to provide training in forensic pathology that will equip the incumbent to successfully complete the forensic pathology examination given by the American Board of Pathology; and to practice as a medical examiner or coroner's pathologist or to enter academic practice as the director of the autopsy service of a teaching hospital. The emphasis in this program is on the acquisition of analytical and cognitive abilities of a caliber to permit the graduate to function as a consultant to the legal, academic medical and practicing medical communities, and to effectively incorporate new knowledge into practice patterns in later years.

Required Rotations:

A fellow can expect to perform over 200 autopsies during the course of the year, testify in numerous depositions, and toward the end of the year, testify in court (murder trials in Hillsborough County come to trial anywhere from 6 months to a year and a half after arrest). Each fellow spends two weeks at the Tampa Regional Crime Laboratory of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and attends a week-long course in forensic anthropology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and spends two weeks in the toxicology section of the Medical Examiner Department.

Appointment and Conferences:

Each fellow has a statutory appointment as Associate Medical Examiner, conducts scene investigations, performs autopsies, and signs his or her own reports. Our teaching program includes case supervision and three teaching conferences; on a weekly basis the medical examiners review scene investigations by projecting Ektachrome transparencies, examine fixed brains and hearts, and discuss pending cases.

Scene Investigations:

Hillsborough County medical examiners go to the scenes of all homicides, some suicides and all industrial accidents when there has been no hospital treatment; and to any other scenes that they elect. They regularly participate in the morbidity and mortality conference of the USF Department of Surgery.

Physical Plant:

The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner Department is housed in a spacious new 3-building complex at 11025 North 46th Street, just south of the USF campus. The autopsy suite has large windows for natural lighting, and an air-handling system that conditions 100% fresh outside air, with no re-circulation, and with laminar air flow over the autopsy tables. In the administration building, the fellow has a private office. Work flow is tracked with a customized database. The third building is the toxicology laboratory.

Faculty:

1.     Vernard Adams, MD, Tufts University, 1979. AP, CP, FP. Chief Medical Examiner and Associate Professor. Special interests in ligamentous neck injury, venous air embolism, autopsy techniques, and the logical basis of opinion formation.

2.     Laura Hair, MD Ohio State University 1986. AP, NP, FP. Associate Medical Examiner and Assistant Professor. Dr. Hair is one of less than a half dozen pathologists in the U.S. trained in both neuropathology and forensic Pathology. Special interests in neuropathology of impact trauma, and differentiation of dementias.

3.     Jacqueline Lee, MD, University of Massachusetts, 1984. AP, CP, FP. Deputy Chief Medical Examiner and Assistant Professor. Forensic pathology.

4.     Leszek Chrostowski, MD, Medical University of Gdansk, 1988. Associate Medical Examiner and Assistant Professor. Forensic pathology.

5.   Erin Kimmerle, Ph.D. University of Tennessee, 2005. Assistant Professor, USF Department of Anthropology. Forensic anthropology

 

Further information:

Dr. Adams, telephone 813-914-4500
e-mail adamsv@hillsboroughcounty.org
11025 North 46th Street, Tampa, Florida 33617