[Histonet] Teaching color blind Histo student

[Tony Henwood (SCHN)]

With Red-Green colour-blindness, I have found that a multi-stain approach works for example:

Often the ZN counterstain used is light green. A second ZN stained with Loefler's Methlene Blue for comparison seems to help.
The same can be done with the Masson's Stain (compare the Fast Green FCF or the Light Green collagen stain with the Masson's Variant using methyl blue, aniline blue or direct sky blue)
If the Twort's variant of the Gram stain  is used, compare with a Brown-Hopp’s Gram Stain.

Those with Red-Green colour blindness seem to compensate excellently and I have found no issues with staff (including pathologists) in differentiating the two colours.

Regards
Tony Henwood JP, MSc, BAppSc, GradDipSysAnalys, CT(ASC), FFSc(RCPA)
Principal Scientist, the Children’s Hospital at Westmead
Adjunct Fellow, School of Medicine, University of Western Sydney
Tel: 612 9845 3306
Fax: 612 9845 3318
Pathology Department
the children's hospital at westmead
Cnr Hawkesbury Road and Hainsworth Street, Westmead
Locked Bag 4001, Westmead NSW 2145, AUSTRALIA

________________________________________
From: B kB via Histonet <histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu>
Sent: Saturday, 27 March 2021 20:50
To: Ruppert, Amysue
Cc: histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Subject: Re: [Histonet] Teaching color blind Histo student

Hi,

Colourblindness ain’t a problem at all.
I know, because I already work for 35 years in the histopathogy.
Just a few things that causes problems for me:
Grossing: I describe tissue in the way I see, mostly I call something with
2 colours, p.e. “ the serose is brownish grey” (while collegaes mostly
mention 1 colour. But I can see the difference between normal and abnormal
tissue, that’s more important.
Embedding: only skin biopsies is it difficult to oriëntate when the colour
of the dermis is the same as the subcutis (in my eyes  ;-). So with that, I
ask my collegaes to embed these biopsies for me.
Staining: When I have to do the stainings, I just have to following the
protocol. In the SOP, There is always a example of the control slide. I
just have to compare the determination with the example of the SOP .

These are just a few example.
A colourblind technologist could be a great technician, with just a very
small restriction.

Regards,
Bert klein Brink
Chief histotechologist



Op za 27 mrt. 2021 om 02:41 schreef Ruppert, Amysue via Histonet <
histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu>

> Hello, we currently have a color blind Histology student.  Does anyone
> have any helpful hints to share about learning in the Histology setting
> with colorblindness?  Note,  we had previous student with colorblindness,
> many years ago, and he did fine.  But most of the teachers that helped him
> are now retired.
>
>
> Thank you
>
> amysue ruppert
>
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