Thank you everyone for your responses. It is very much appreciated. It is an up hill issue as most of the technical staff have been here and maybe one other lab in their entire career and "no one's complained before". I'd like that phrase and "that's the way we've always done it" stricken from all languages and any alien dialects we might ever encounter in our lives.
Happy Friday and have a great weekend! Vikki On Fri, Mar 8, 2019, 2:38 PM Mayer,Toysha N via Histonet < histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu> wrote: > Vikki, > > I teach students that they should not have any air bubbles in their > blocks. This means those under the lip of the cassette as well as > surrounding the tissues. Air bubbles can cause instability in the block > especially if the tissue is hard or very small. When they go to a clinical > rotation no preceptor checks their blocks as closely as I do, but they can > get a 'perfect' block without much effort. Our tissues and cassettes have > mostly been donated, so the quality may not be as optimal as that in a > clinical lab, so if they can get a good block embedded with me, they can do > it anywhere. > It is actually a scored item on our graded checklist, along with the > overall embedded time. > You might want to do an in-service on air bubbles and give them a CEU for > it. > > Hope this helps. > > Toysha N. Mayer D.H.Sc., MBA, HT(ASCP) > Assistant Professor/Associate Program Director > HTL Program > MD Anderson School of Health Professions > 713.563.3481 > tnma...@mdanderson.org > > > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2019 18:32:41 +0000 > From: "deGuzman, Jose R" <jose.r.deguz...@gunet.georgetown.edu> > To: Victoria Baker <bakevicto...@gmail.com>, > "histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu" > <histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu> > Subject: > Message-ID: > < > by2pr13mb06966aaed227c932c333509196...@by2pr13mb0696.namprd13.prod.outlook.com > > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hello Vikki, > > What you are experiencing is the lack of quality feedback. The > "experienced" techs may have never been told that their quality needs to > improve due to complacency or management is afraid they might leave. This > gets worse if they have gotten away with producing poor quality for a long > time and nobody has provided much needed feedback to them. You may have an > uphill battle ahead of you but very much worth taking. > > Jose > > -----Original Message----- > From: Victoria Baker <bakevicto...@gmail.com> > Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2019 5:49 PM > To: histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu > Subject: [Histonet] Air pocket in paraffin blocks > > Hi, > > When I was trained to do embedding there were many things that the > professor stressed to me need to be done in order to have the tissue block > acceptable for sectioning. One of these was air bubbles. > > Recently we had a new tech embed a derm block that had an bubble that was > pretty big. The other (experienced) techs didn't think anything of it > either and sectioned it. When I got the block for IHC screening I made a > QA form stating that the block should have been re-embedded before giving > it to be sectioned, or when the first tech sectioned it could have repaired > the block or melted it down. This air bubble was big enough to be seen so > I don't think it could have been missed - unless the block wasn't checked > right after embedding. > > What has me a little upset is that no one seemed to care about this. > > I would really appreciate some feedback about this from other people. > > Thanks in advance. > > Vikki > > > The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged, > confidential, and/or protected from disclosure. This e-mail message may > contain protected health information (PHI); dissemination of PHI should > comply with applicable federal and state laws. If you are not the intended > recipient, or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, any > further review, disclosure, use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of > this message or any attachment (or the information contained therein) is > strictly prohibited. If you think that you have received this e-mail > message in error, please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete all > references to it and its contents from your systems. > > > _______________________________________________ > Histonet mailing list > Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu > http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet > _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
