Uh-Oh - A trip to the ER!

When you work with scalpels for 40 hours during the week your odds of cutting yourself are significantly higher than the average individual.  I was able to go six months before the odds were no longer in my favor.  I had just put away a really gruesome leg amputation specimen and changed my scalpel blade (thankfully) to start working on some bone specimens. I took my first section out of a femoral head (remember this guy from my getting a workout at work post?) and was going back for more when the specimen rolled and the scalpel rolled with it – straight through my middle finger.  And when I say through, I mean the blade went in one side of my finger and out on top of my knuckle (there was a lot of force behind this cut).  Thankfully, I work in a hospital and could walk upstairs to the Emergency Department.  Because I was working with another human’s body parts, it wasn’t enough to bandage me up and send me on my way. I had to be sure that I didn’t become infected with any bloodborne pathogens (mainly HIV and Hep C). After testing of all parties involved, the results were negative, which was a huge relief!

All smiles in the ER - yes my supervisor did capture
every step of the adventure

Of course it had to be the middle finger!

Injuries like this are a very real part of being a Pathologists’ Assistant – typically they aren't as severe as this one, but nicks and scrapes are bound to happen.  We handle many tissue types and bodily fluids each day that it’s important to be aware of the exposure risks that we may encounter on the job. I was very lucky that I had been cut with a new blade, on a specimen that had been in formalin and then a decalcifying solution (makes bones softer) for two days.  If I had cut myself on a fresh specimen, like the leg I was previously working on, I may not have been so lucky.  Moral of the story –  stabilize femoral heads and if a specimen requires that much force to take a section, it's probably not ready to be cut!

You could definitely say I went out with a bang my last week at Butler Memorial Hospital. No worries though, I’m able to continue grossing as usual and have moved down to Charleston, WV to start my next rotation at Thomas Memorial Hospital.

Butler Memorial Hospital

Tomorrow will be the start of my fourth week at Butler Memorial Hospital (BMH). This is the first year that WVU PA students will be rotating through this site.  The hospital is located about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, about an hour drive.  BMH receives around 16,000-18,000 surgical pathology specimens annually and does not complete any postmortem examinations.  The specimens range from simple GI biopsies and skins to more complex specimens such as colons, prostates, and mastectomies for cancer.

The pathology department has six pathologists with specialties in dermatopathology, hematopathology, and general pathology/cytology.  Butler has a pathologists’ assistant who is actually the mom of one of my classmates (she is awesome!).  In addition, the laboratory, gross room, and histology are all in the same area so we get plenty of interaction with the histology/cytology techs as well.

Butler, like many other pathology labs, uses voice recognition software (turns your talk into text so that you don’t have to keep touching the keyboard with bloody gloves) for dictations.  After three weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that voice recognition software can be your best friend or your worst enemy.  It’s a great alternative to manually typing dictations, but sometimes it is quite finicky.  Sometimes it will comprehend the most complicated medical terms such as “malacoplakia” or “biliary dyskinesia”, but then won’t understand you when you say “with” or “the”.

And then there are the times where your mouth just stops working and spews out an incoherent word “cholelithalksjjs” and you think, “there’s no possible way the computer understood that”, and then it does “cholelithiasis”.  For any Harry Potter fans, it reminds me a lot of the first time Harry Potter used Floo Powder (except in this case the software still lets me into Diagon Alley):

Voice recognition software conundrums aside, I’m loving my time at Butler Memorial Hospital.  I love having the high specimen load to keep me busy throughout the day and love being able to gross some more complex specimens. It’s definitely a competitor for my favorite rotation site.