Rick,
May I come and work in your lab???  I manually stain an average of 50
immunoperoxidase slides per day which means that run sizes range from
about 40 - 110 with very ocassional very quiet days (usually on the day
when I'm not doing them!).  Each slide is labelled then checked for
correct and satisfactory staining at the end of the run.  The "quiet"
days are easily filled in with paperwork (such as ordering and updating
manuals etc) as well as making reagents, checking new and current
techniques, cutting controls and so on.  I also do some
immunofluorescence staining, most of which comes when I have 70+
immunoperoxidase slides to stain.  (Murphy's Law).  I lot of time is
spent helping and advising researchers, teaching as well as sorting out
other matters around the laboratory.

The immunoperoxidase lab has one staff member (me) and a "backup" who
does one run per week.  I have a "day out" in the main lab when my
"back-up" person does the run.  However, the afternoon is still usually
spent doing things for the immunochemistry lab - cutting controls etc.
For one person it can be a battle to keep pace.  An extra pair of hands,
even for short periods, can be a real assett.  The quality of staining
is not compromised but the stress...  well, let's just say I look
forward to my allocated days off and my holidays.

In the days when we did 25 - 30 slides per day I was required to do 1 -
2 hours of embedding before starting the immunoperoxidase.  The
immunoperoxidase also had to be finished in time to go with a courier at
14:30.  Despite having an average of 45 slides per day this continued
until recently when I took 4 months leave and nobody else was able to
achieve all the deadlines.

Penny Marr

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Richard Maliniak [SMTP:maliniakrm@worldnet.att.net]
> Sent:	Saturday, 17 July 1999 7:05
> To:	HistoNet
> Subject:	IHC Staffing
> 
> This question directed to Immunohistochemistry labs that have a
> subsection or seperate section seperate from the Histology Section.
> How
> many people do you have to run your immunostains.....without
> compromising quality and overstressing the technologists.  Please give
> me your experience as the number of slides each technologist can do
> per
> day either automated and/or manually.  
> 
> My Experience: Automated 45-50 slides...Manually 25-30 slides.
> 
> Thanks in Advance!
> 
> Rick
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