[Histonet] Microtome Accident Prevention Ideas

[Pairan, Kelly]

Good Afternoon Histonetters,
Three weeks ago, I was cutting at a manual microtome and when I finished laying my ribbon on the waterbath and turned back to my block, I happened to nick my finger on the end of my microtome blade.  It was a freak accident of my finger being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I required 2 stitches.  No big deal.  Histotechs often have scars.  In fact this is my second one on this finger.  The last incident was over 10 years ago at another institution.  I was invited today to a meeting of some higher level management to discuss the incident and to come up with interventions to prevent these incidents in the future.  This was a freak accident that couldn't have been prevented, in my opinion. It is impossible to transfer a ribbon to your waterbath and put the blade guard up at the same time.  I do want to come to the meeting with ideas though because I am walking into a room full of people who have never laid eyes on a microtome and I don't want them to come up with ideas for me.  Here are some measures that we already have in place:
1) We always lock our wheel when we are not turning it.
2) We put our blade guard up when we are changing out a block or when we walk away from our microtome.
3) After cleaning our microtomes, we put them back together and check to make sure they are locked appropriately.
4) We never leave a blade in the microtome when we are leaving for the day.

Thanks for your help,
Kelly

Kelly Pairan,  HT (ASCP)CM, QIHC (ASCP)
Histology Supervisor-Anatomic Pathology
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Email:  kelly.pairan at nationwidechildrens.org
ph: 614-722-5414
fx: 614-722-3033