On Friday, we took a field trip to Children’s Hospital, Boston (more specifically, we were given a tour of the Pathology Department and the Orthopedics Lab). I was very excited about the trip, because it was our first field trip together as a group and I was looking forward to learning some new and interesting information.
First, we headed to the Pathology Department of Children’s. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos in the Pathology Department, mainly because any and all patient information is confidential and is it very important to respect the privacy of patients. Before beginning the tour with John Baci, a pathologist at Children’s, we met in a nearby conference room, where we briefed him on what we are doing at RAP, and in return, he briefed us on what his job entails as a pathologist. Pathology is the branch of medical science that studies the causes and nature and effects of diseases. In the pathology department, all the patients that come through, sadly, are already passed away. The job of the people in this department is to quickly figure out the cause of the patient’s death through medical procedures such as autopsies.
Mr. Baci showed us the cutting room first, which I found very intriguing. In this room, they make what are called pathology reports - reports that have been ordered by authorized healthcare professionals describing what has been found in the tissues removed from a patient's body. Mr. Baci told us that if the surgeons know that just one part of the child’s body (a leg, for example) is what was making them sick, they will remove the entire leg and take samples from it. Samples are taken from all different organs and parts of the body - the liver, the tonsils, even from the eyeball! The workers in the cutting room take as many samples as they need in order to diagnose the child’s cause of death.
The samples removed in the cutting room are then brought to histologists, who create slides and blocks from the samples. A histologist is an anatomist who specializes in the microscopic study of animal (and/or human) tissues. The sample is placed into a small plastic dish, called a cassette, the cassette is placed into a mold, and then hot paraffin wax is poured into the wax to preserve the sample. Once it is dry, you have what is called a block. Once the block is dry, pathologists and other authorized healthcare professionals can look at and handle them without wearing gloves! Mr. Baci said that this issue an ongoing battle in the healthcare world, but because the samples are covered with the wax, one’s hands never touch the actual sample. It was interesting to watch the slides being made as well. The wax blocks are used to make the slides, and a histologist cuts slices thinner than a piece of paper off the wax blocks, puts them in a water bath for a few seconds, and then puts them on the glass slide. The slides are then put in dyes of various colors so that they can be better seen. Each patient’s blocks/slide are given an ID number that they are identified by that is written on each one. In the department I am working in at HSPH, I am actually working with these same exact blocks and slides, so I was excited to be able to have some more in-depth information on how they were made.
Finally, we visited the morgue of the pathology department. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be! One particular thing that stuck with me from visiting the morgue was the new machine that is able to detect when an infant has unfortunately died from shaken baby syndrome. The name of the machine escapes me right now, but I just found that one piece of technology to be quite impressing. I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Children Hospital, because I was refreshed on some information I already knew, and I was able to learn some new information as well!
