[Histonet] TWO SPECIMENS IN ONE CONTAINER

[Patsy Ruegg]

Dana I can't answer your question but this reminds me of something that
really happened to me.  Bare with me folks I am in a mood.....

There was once a cytotechnologists who was not allowed to screen cytologies
anymore because they had signed out too many positive cases as negative.
The department could not get rid of this person outright (don't ask me why
not) so they made them work as a gofer for all the other labs.  I was
running the heme/path lab at the time by myself and very understaffed.
Besides all the laboratory duties I had I also assisted with bone marrow
biopsies which took me out of the lab away from my duties even more.  Since
the demoted cytotech had experience with assisting with FNA's etc., the
administration put them on bone marrow assistance duty to help me out.  When
word got around that this person was helping out, my pathologists came to me
an said specifically "do not let that person touch my samples".  Well, the
admin. person said send them on bm duty anyway.  On a very busy day, this
person came back to my lab with one vial with 2 bone marrow biopsies in the
vial and said to me as they handed me the vial "the longer sample belongs to
patient Joe Blow and the shorter sample belongs to patient Mary Doe".  The
tech had run out of fixative vials and decided to put two samples from two
different patients in the same vial instead of coming back to the lab for
more vials.  Imagine my horror!  I carefully recorded the description of
which sample belonged to who so that at least that would not get lost.  I
then walked the tech with the vial with 2 bm samples in it to the office of
the administrator and said that I would not take responsible for this
situation and wanted nothing to do with it.  I also told the admin. what my
pathologists had just said to me about not letting that person touch their
samples.
I was told to process the samples as usual and label them as had been
described.  I did.  As  it turned out there was no difference in diagnosis
in these two samples.  They were the same.  These were renal patients being
biopsied to test for aluminum bone disease and they both were negative.
Imagine if it had come out some other way.  One positive and one neg. or if
they were leukemia patients and one was in remission and the other not.  As
I recall it still took months to finally get rid of this person, but they
did not do bm assistant duty anymore.  It matters what we do and how we do
it!
Best regards,
Patsy



-----Original Message-----
From: histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
[mailto:histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu]On Behalf Of
DDittus787 <@t> aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 1:23 PM
To: Histonet <@t> pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: [Histonet] TWO SPECIMENS IN ONE CONTAINER


Hi, once more i am asking for your assistance, what are you guys doing, when
two vas or fallopian tube come in one container? as i understand it, for
compliance when one container one cassette, you cannot designate right and
left unless indicated.am i barking up the wrong tree or is this the
compliance issue so that all things are correct. help me out here.
thanks
                           Dana

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