The Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner (MCOME) offers an ACGME-accredited, one-year Forensic Pathology Fellowship, sponsored by the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix. The fellowship is open to applicants who will have completed a three- or four-year anatomic or anatomic/clinical pathology residency prior to matriculation. MCOME’s program currently is approved and funded for two fellows annually.

Our program’s core purpose is to inspire and train exemplary physician leaders in the subspecialty of forensic pathology, so that they may serve in the critical public health and safety operations of state and local medicolegal death investigation systems; these systems serve all members of the public by investigating traumatic, non-natural, sudden/unexplained, and high-risk communicable disease deaths in their communities and by sharing information about these deaths with policy-makers, health officials, safety officials and the public-at-large. This may help prevent future deaths, enabling communities to thrive.

As MCOME is one of the busiest medical examiner’s offices in the United States, fellows will have access to a wide breadth of cases — including all forms of trauma, substance use, sudden unexpected natural diseases and communicable diseases. Under the supervision of experienced, board-certified forensic pathologists, fellows will become a fully autonomous forensic pathology practitioner by year’s end and learn valuable skills outside of the examination suite. These include how to manage practice challenges — like speaking with grieving families, building resilience to vicarious trauma, navigating the legal system, emergency responses and media relations.

Thank you for your interest in the MCOME Forensic Pathology Fellowship Program! Our fellowship will develop your medical death investigation skills and a forensic mindset through didactics, casework and discussion of our agency’s work.