Went into detail regarding our surg path schedule (which can be quite daunting and complex upon the first read...and the first several weeks on surg path as an actual resident!) in my scutwork review on Brigham.
In brief, we roughly go in a cycle but we can do a little bit of everything in a given day.
For instance, two days ago, I was cutting in specimens until 5:30 pm and then I had to preview a couple of boxes of slides. Yesterday, all I did was sign out the cases I previewed and then start previewing the stuff that came out in the afternoon. Today I signed out in the morning and received specimens to tuck into formalin for me to cut in sometime during the weekend.
yaah said:
Can I just say I hate the term, "Bigs," when it refers to specimens? It drives me batty. I'm not trying to criticize you guys in particular for using the term because that is what most people call them. I just hate the word! It's similar to how there is one program out there (can't remember which) that calls things "bigs" and "quicks."
Yeah, that's my program. The terms are a bit misleading. Generally, quicks specimens don't have to be tucked into formalin overnight...instead they can be cut in that same day. Typically they tend to be smaller specimens but it's weird...if we get a breast excision specimen on our "Quicks" service, we usually fix them overnight anyway cuz floppy titty tissue is hard to cut in and they lead to crappy histology if not fixed for an appropriate amount of time.
Then there are "Bigs" which is a misleading term because some "Bigs" specimens are actually kinda small. I received some pretty small cases which I could've cut in today (if I had nothing else better to do on a Friday evening).
I propose the terms "Bigs" and "Quicks" to be changed to the following terms...
Bigs ==> Educational specimens or ES.
Quicks ==> Stupid specimens of little or no educational value or SSLNEV.
Man, if the terms "Bigs" and "Quicks" terms piss you off...you'd probably be even more flabbergasted that we split the "Bigs" specimens into Dry Bigs and Bigs. WTF? That makes no sense! WTF is a dry big? And why isn't the other Big called a Wet Big?
I propose the following changes to the terms:
Dry Bigs ==> not my problem bigs = NMP bigs (i.e., PA's cut these in for us).
(Wet? or Regular?) Bigs ==> oh **** I gotta get off my ass and work...bigs = simply denoted by the mnemonic called = F*CK.
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And yaah, I know you got all engaged 'n all and you're probably the happiest acromegalic man on the planet but don't be a hater, OK?