[Histonet] Re: Slide quality

[Robert Richmond]

You couldn't get the average pathologist, definitely including this
one, to even notice most of the folds and wrinkles that occur in
sections. We've become so used to ignoring them that when we teach
photomicrography to residents, we have to remind them not to
photograph areas in the slide with wrinkles in them - they look like
hell when they're projected.

I think that asking the pathologist to document wrinkles and folds is
unreasonable.

In the various labs I do pathology in, the recurrent problem is GI
biopsies with shatter and "window-blind" artifact. My requests to
address the problem are usually ignored. Very few pathology services
do separate processor runs for small specimens, and I've never been
able to get a laboratory to even consider it.

If I ran the zoo, I'd have a double headed microscope (not permitted
for pathologists in small pathology services), and I'd look at the
day's run of slides with a senior histotechnologist nearly every day.
That to my mind might launch an effective quality assurance program.

I agree with you (before you argue with me!) that most pathologists in
this circumstance would be so abusive that the exercise would be quite
unendurable for the technologist.

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN