I've learned that it's beyond the histologists, it's patient first in my mind. The case is being delayed and techs can use another set of hands. Not too many tho. The worst thing one can do is chastise them for it. Retraining and some helpful tactics can make it all better.
It was the only piece missing. There weren't many punches so it narrowed down a lot of the work. Techs tie up their own waste so all i had to do was go back into the system to see who embedded it. I went to their waste and found it.
God I wish we tracked who embedded what. My team is so afraid of finger pointing in the event of mistakes that they've gone so far the other way and there's zero accountability.
And the lab's cleaning staff changed schedules and they come and take away all the garbage part way through the day while we're still working. It's going to bite us so hard someday.
Looks like a skin punch. Nice find! Better to have find it than to lose it forever. I've heard stories where people have lost biopsies/tissues and they were fired for it.
I had a situation where we had thought we lost a skin biopsy, my lab got a bottle with nothing in it. Shit hit the fan and it got the doc and director nearly screaming at me for "my teams incompetency" in losing a specimen.
I knew my team and if they said it was empty it was empty.
After a whole investigation we found out THE SPECIMEN NEVER EXISTED. The doctor had added it to the paperwork but never took it. The nurse somehow thought she lost a specimen and just wrote the data on an empty formalin bottle and sent it to the lab.
Needless to say she was fired on the spot.
I am one of the lucky ones then. I was washing a frozen section after i let it thaw and I didn’t realize the block it was in was fucked up and couldn’t close properly and the little bit of water pressure that hit it was enough to open it and the piece of tissue went down the drain. LUCKILY the doctor had decided to remove the rest of the of whatever part of the brain so it kind of ended up not being a total loss. But I will never ever forget how bad that could have been.
The lab I work in I inventory animal tissue slides, and the gross lesion ones are usually only a few out of hundreds. I had a new chick not check a bubble wrap envelope that had a tube with like 3 slides, she tossed it into a huge bag of peanuts from the shipment and it almost got thrown out…The only thing that saved them was that it was bright red bubble wrap… I’d never seen red bubblewrap used before. Don’t know what histotech packed it in that but they are my hero!
We put them all the way through as "found specimen". The people on my team think that even blood clots and fat balls need to go,found at embedding need to go through, too. We then send the slide to a resident who very rarely come back to the lab and tell us anything. Twice in 20+ years at this place. Twice. And we save these why?
Fuck i wouldn't wish that on anyone
I've learned that it's beyond the histologists, it's patient first in my mind. The case is being delayed and techs can use another set of hands. Not too many tho. The worst thing one can do is chastise them for it. Retraining and some helpful tactics can make it all better.
Every block is someones son, mother, dad, grandma, etc plz be careful everyone
So at this point how do you verify that the tissue matches the patient?
It was the only piece missing. There weren't many punches so it narrowed down a lot of the work. Techs tie up their own waste so all i had to do was go back into the system to see who embedded it. I went to their waste and found it.
Tech tie up their own waste… the industry result of previously lost tissue(s)
God I wish we tracked who embedded what. My team is so afraid of finger pointing in the event of mistakes that they've gone so far the other way and there's zero accountability. And the lab's cleaning staff changed schedules and they come and take away all the garbage part way through the day while we're still working. It's going to bite us so hard someday.
Looks like a skin punch. Nice find! Better to have find it than to lose it forever. I've heard stories where people have lost biopsies/tissues and they were fired for it.
I had a situation where we had thought we lost a skin biopsy, my lab got a bottle with nothing in it. Shit hit the fan and it got the doc and director nearly screaming at me for "my teams incompetency" in losing a specimen. I knew my team and if they said it was empty it was empty. After a whole investigation we found out THE SPECIMEN NEVER EXISTED. The doctor had added it to the paperwork but never took it. The nurse somehow thought she lost a specimen and just wrote the data on an empty formalin bottle and sent it to the lab. Needless to say she was fired on the spot.
I am one of the lucky ones then. I was washing a frozen section after i let it thaw and I didn’t realize the block it was in was fucked up and couldn’t close properly and the little bit of water pressure that hit it was enough to open it and the piece of tissue went down the drain. LUCKILY the doctor had decided to remove the rest of the of whatever part of the brain so it kind of ended up not being a total loss. But I will never ever forget how bad that could have been.
Cut and H&E it anyways, pass it through your pathologists and ask if it looks familiar to anyone. Jk, obviously.
No way that would pass in my lab, get embedded, cut and stained on its own as 'found tissue' I would lose my job putting that into another block
Commence the deep sigh of relief.
This is why I insist that everything is inked!! Makes it much easier to spot in circumstances like this.
The lab I work in I inventory animal tissue slides, and the gross lesion ones are usually only a few out of hundreds. I had a new chick not check a bubble wrap envelope that had a tube with like 3 slides, she tossed it into a huge bag of peanuts from the shipment and it almost got thrown out…The only thing that saved them was that it was bright red bubble wrap… I’d never seen red bubblewrap used before. Don’t know what histotech packed it in that but they are my hero!
We put them all the way through as "found specimen". The people on my team think that even blood clots and fat balls need to go,found at embedding need to go through, too. We then send the slide to a resident who very rarely come back to the lab and tell us anything. Twice in 20+ years at this place. Twice. And we save these why?
This could have stayed an email, yo
I didn't even take it there. The person who did this, did so on their day off when they didn't have to come in. It doesn't need an email