Lilith,

I, for one, would like to see more of the replies that you received.  In
the past, I have also been asked to process tissues that I was unaware of
the specific processing times-etc. that would be needed (by hand, as well,
since I work for a small research lab). I found it very frustrating when
the lab-head was dissappointed that the very first blocks I did were
readable, but not photographable!  Obviously, he hasn't processed tissue
himself.  Fortunately, in my case, we work on animal tissue. (We had
seen pathologic changes in the ear and were interested if there was any
evidence of changes in the brainstem.)  We had enough tissue for me to
eventually get a few photo-quality examples.

I think the offensive comment you mentioned was not aimed at
you, but at your boss.  It is unreasonable to expect that a non-certified
technicians can successfully process everything-unless they have had
specific training. Too often it seems, bosses are too cheap with their
tech's time and with the lab. money to see that their personnel get
the proper training.  If they want you to do the job-and they don't
want to hire someone already qualified-then they need to spend some time
and money to get you trained - or - be ready to spend some time and waste
some tissue and supplies until you figure out how to do it yourself.

My boss usually prefers the latter- so I would appreciate getting any new
info.

Thankyou,

Karen Pawlowski
Sr. Res. Tech. UT Southwestern Med. Ctr./
PhD Student, UT Dallas
Dallas, TX

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Barry, Lilith wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> 
> I appreciate very much the numerous replies you have sent to my basic tissue
> processing question. As usual you have supplied the valuable practical
> information which will spare me from learning from my own mistakes. That is
> one of many reasons why the Histonet is so wondeful!  Thank you very much.
> 
> There are couple of things that bother me though and would like to share
> with you and be corrected  by you if I am wrong. 
> 
> One of them is that all the replies came to me personally, that is the
> copies were not sent to the listserver.  So frequently I have seen
> questions posted and have seen very few if any replies to them. I guess mine
> was one of them. True, my question was very basic but still, there might be
> some new histologist that might benefit from the replies. 
> 
> The second concern is  that among those many helpful replies there was one
> very unprofessional  reply coming from a prominent anatomist. And this one
> was posted, even twice! Most of the subscribers that have read the question
> and have seen only one offensive reply to it. Don't you think that this will
> discourage them from posting questions? If they had seen all the helpful
> replies, the negative one would be easily ignored.
> 
> I am eager to read your posted  comments on this.
> 
> Lilith
> 
> 
> Lilith Ohannessian-Barry                               
> National Research Council                          
> Institute of Biological Sciences                  
> CANADA
> Tel;613-993-6460
> Fax;613-941-4475
> e-mail; lilith.barry@nrc.ca <mailto:lilith.barry@nrc.ca> 
> 
>