[Histonet] Average cutting of blocks

[Jim Staruk]

I did a time study on myself recently over a period of 1 week
(approximately 600 specimens).  This included cassettes with single
tissues (surgicals) and multiple tissues (necropsies).  Here are the
averages:

To embed and "clean" each block, 56 seconds
To "face" each block, 34 seconds
To write out the slide and cut one block (mostly one section), 113
seconds
To manually coverslip each stained slide, 26 seconds

This averaged out to 15.75 slides per hour.  This did not include
staining time.

Jim

___________________
     Jim Staruk
Mass Histology Service
www.masshistology.com
 


Subject: [Histonet] Average cutting of blocks

Hello everyone:
This is a question for lab managers and supervisors
I would like to know what would be an average number of blocks that a
Histotechnician can handle on a 7 hour working day; from embedding to
coverslipping (only coverslipping is done on machine) Has anyone done a
study on this?
I should say that my lab works mostly with animal tissue of which, 50%
is complete mice necropsies (i.e. small pieces of tissue -sometimes up
to 6 organs in one cassette), the rest is usually only one piece of
tissue per cassette. One H&E/cassette
I would appreciate any input on this.
Thanks in advance
Patricia Maldonado HT (ASCP)
MSKCC