Surg Path day

[gungho]

Curious to know others' volume on their grossing days. At my institution, we do cut-read-read, with frozen coverage on 1st half of the cut day and 2nd half of the 2nd read day (day before next cutting). Our volume varies with the day of the week, but probably averages 40-50 different case numbers, obviously some with more than one part, and including biopsies. From your perspective, is that light , heavy , or just right ?

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[yaah]

Our days are all the same - signout is from 9am until it finishes (anytime between 11am and 4pm), cutting and previewing at any other time (slides come out for previewing in early afternoon). I don't know the number of cases, but it depends on the service. Of course, some cases have 45 specimens and over a hundred slides.

Yours sounds probably about average. I guess I would gauge it on what your hours are like - are you there on an average day for 14-16 hours?

 

[ernie]

Yours sounds probably about average. I guess I would gauge it on what your hours are like - are you there on an average day for 14-16 hours?

Are you serious? i've heard stories of path residents working this long; but i dont get it. what would one do for 16 hours?

 

[yaah]

Well, my day went:

7am-8am, organize things and deal with issues that came up the previous night (like mislabeled slides, missing cases, etc)
8-9 conference
9-12 signout
12-1 lunch and doing busy work errands
1-1:30 consensus conference
1:30 until I finish, do all the grossing for the day and preview all the cases for the next day. Sometimes that meant until 5 or 6, sometimes 9 or 10. Usually it was around 7pm. We also had afternoon conferences a couple of days per week, so that took up another hour. And sometimes you have to do unexpected things like deal with clinicians paging you for results, or finishing an autopsy that you had over a weekend, or whatever.

So, my average day was not usually 14-16 hours. More like 12-14 on surg path. But I could have spent 18 every day and still not have run out of things to do.

 

[gungho]

Of course, some cases have 45 specimens and over a hundred slides.

Yours sounds probably about average. I guess I would gauge it on what your hours are like - are you there on an average day for 14-16 hours?

I rarely stay later than 1800 on grossing day, but often come in early or squeeze in some time the next day to cut in specimens that I left to fix overnight. Often I will work through lunch or miss various conferences depending on workload. On sign-out days, rarely there past 1700, but that's attending-dependent and they ain't staying longer than they have to.
What in the world has 45 parts and over a hundred slides? My record is probably 40 slides for a bilateral mastectomy.

 

[gungho]

Yaah, you need a wife and a life-how can anyone amass 10,000+ posts?

 

[yaah]

It actually doesn't take a ton of effort, you'd be surprised.

45 parts and over a hundred slides: Total laryngectomy with intraoperative FS margins, many of which were positive and required re-excision. Plus bilateral neck dissections divided up by the surgeon into regions.

 

[gungho]

45 parts and over a hundred slides: Total laryngectomy with intraoperative FS margins, many of which were positive and required re-excision. Plus bilateral neck dissections divided up by the surgeon into regions.

Yeah, I can see that-forgot about the frozens.