Marcia,
Is your boss a Pathologist?  The one basic requirment to be certified is
that you must work under a Pathologist or a certified HT/HTL.  If you have
always been in research you may not be working with Pathologist or
Histotechnologist.  You may want to take the Qualification in
Immunohistochemistry and not the HT/HTL, this has no such requirments for
working with Pathologist, you must only have experience in
Immunohistochemistry.  I can fax you info about this and other info about
the NSH IHC Resource Group which I chair, if you send me a fax number.
Patsy Ruegg

-----Original Message-----
From: Marcia Bentz [mailto:mb7x@virginia.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 1999 6:12 AM
To: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: questions about certification


Hi all,
I have several questions about certifications. All my experience has been
in research and I'm pretty much self taught (of course with the help of the
Histonet group!) What I want to know is what the levels of certification
are, what experience/education is required and who do I contact to get
things rolling and get instructional material. Basically I've done H&E's
and lots of immunohistochemistry, focusing on cytokines. I've worked with
frozens and paraffin and do all fixation/processing/staining manually. My
boss is working on a NIH program project and wants me to be the
histology/IHC core lab supervisor. I don't feel comfortable with accepting
this role without more education and experience and he's supporting me and
willing to do what needs to be done to help me to achieve certification. I
am currently in the state of Virginia, so anyone in VA that could tell me
the paticulars if any for this state would be appreciated.
As always thanks for all the great help!
Marcia