St. Francis Hospital

My six-week autopsy rotation has come and gone and I’ve started my new rotation at St. Francis Hospital.  St. Francis is a community-based hospital in Charleston, WV. It’s a smaller hospital and the Pathology Department is comprised of one pathologist, three histotechnologists, and one transcriptionist.  Since it’s a smaller hospital and there is a lighter specimen load, the PA students get to do all of the grossing. 

A typical workday at St. Francis starts by reviewing the slides, under the microscope, from the previous day with the pathologist.  I really value this time because it allows me to get immediate feedback on the sections I submitted and find out if anything was missing from my dictations. Once the pathologist has signed out the cases, I head to the gross room and start grossing the specimens for the day.  St. Francis seems to get a lot of head and neck specimens (tonsils, thyroid, parotid gland, etc.) as well as skins, GI biopsies, and occasionally colons. Occasionally, the pathologist does get called for frozen sections, so I’ve been able to get more practice cutting frozen sections as well.

I really enjoy the fact that this rotation allows you to work independently and make your own judgment calls.  I'm starting to feel confident that I know what sections to take and the pertinent information to include in the dictations.  It feels good not to be asking nearly as many questions!

So many tonsils!