Can anyone describe a typical day of a pathologist in private practice????????
Is it like you enter the lab, a hundred specimens waiting, got to dissect them out , make slides, watch them under a microscope and write a report,next attend bloodbank calls...What else ? Can anyone give a detailed description please
you reallly??? want to know??
Okay...3 division hospital 700 beds....5 pathologists with one on a 4 week vacation.
I am covering as acting chair...Come in and get inundated with a mess of peripheral smears for review and 3 transfusion reactions. None of them worth spit...in other words all the periph smears are normal( but the techs are too scared or lazy to think about them when reading them the night before). Transfusion reactions are all for fever or chills..hemolytic and coombs negative. No respiratory problems so no risk of TRALI.
Walk around the lab checking things out and chatting with techs. Get a mess of revisions of procedures that need my review and signature.
The Lab manager needs to chat with me about a proposed CME for nurisng on how to handle transfusion reactions. Problem -- 3 division hospital, three shifts, how to do the CME....propose using the video conferencing setup..."oh do we have that??is it working???"..yes it is working they use it 3 - 5 times a week for the emdical school and students....Look into using it please..and taping the session....the pathologists will not enjoy getting up at midnight just to hold a cme seminar for the night shift!
Finally can sit down to look at miy slides...ooops, my turn to gross...head to the grossing bench and spend 3 hours...in between getting interrupted for inconsequential matters.
Late lunch after noon slide conference with rest of pathologists for tough cases, whihc runs over an hour....finally sit down with my slides and it is 2 30 pm....transcriptionists are frantic...want to know if I will finish beofre thier shift ends at 4....( assure them i will do my best but anything not done will hold till tmw.
Take my phone off hook so i can read slides in peace....email starts beeping...
it's Hospital medical director.....wants to chat with me NOW. Sigh....call him up and get put on hold....then he can't chat because he has someone else( i refrain from asking who...) on the line...tell him to call me back when ready( 3 days later..has not yet called back)....
finally done with my work at 6 pm...and drag my way home for dinner....
Thankfully I am not on call THIS week.
