Greetings! I recently attended the 34th Annual National Society for Histotechnology Symposium/Convention and I have been thinking just what did I gain from this particular experience. I have participated in many NSH Conventions in the past, but this meeting really seemed to me to be the push towards CHANGE.

There were more workshops on process improvement than ever before. New instruments with LEAN principles in mind were presented and systems addressing rapid results were featured. Digital pathology took one step closer to reality and, for the first time, manufacturers introduced systems to manage Histology workflow. It certainly seemed to me that the meeting was telling me NOW is the time to CHANGE our approach to managing Histology. Did you get the same message?

It is my opinion that we, Technical Leadership in Histology, have to acknowledge that the vendors and manufacturers understand it’s time to standardize our processes to support continual process improvement and provide the products we need to become an efficient part of the whole Laboratory. I am not talking about the Histology labs that are involved in research, I talking about the Hospital, private and commercial labs where the majority of the patient tissue sampling takes place. We can no longer afford to continue to work in the same ways. If a product will not reduce cost, eliminate waste, save time, shorten turnaround time or free up our technical staff, then we MUST say NO! We need to demand SMART TECHNOLOGY and implement it now. What new instrument or technology do you need?

I also heard many stories of Histology labs consolidating, workloads increasing, continued labor shortages and many of my peers searching for ways to address these issues. Add to this the mix of multigenerational staff problems developing in Histology with the explosion of Molecular testing and we could just have a major catastrophe on our hands.

Now that I have your attention, here’s my question; how can we bridge the gap created by increased workload, diminishing qualified staff and limited resources from our companies? I feel that a combination of LEAN Six Sigma, the right team and the best equipment is the mix and the real answer. We MUST embrace this mix of strategic tools. Do you see any other way?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under HistoTalk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.