First off: Welcome to the Duke Pathologists' Assistant class of 2015! I missed your first day last week, but I'm sure it was a lot of orientation materials and figuring out where you're supposed to go for class tomorrow followed by some awesome eats at Pam's house. Good luck guys, it is an adventure (and if anyone wants to write a guest blog post, let me know!).
Back to me now! I finished general orientation Tuesday morning and got laboratory orientation (always good to know where the safety equipment is). Wednesday started my first full day in pathology. I learned enough Cerner Millennium to work for now and got to start grossing under the observation of the full time PA (aka my boss). Thursday and Friday I was much more on my own.
I should mention that when I started my first job in pathology there was one other grossing tech and I was to learn by watching him (and reading the manual). Which would probably have been much less stressful if he hadn't also chosen that week to stop smoking. Or... had at least told me that he had just decided to stop smoking and was really grumpy and irritable for that reason. I spent the first few weeks of that job convinced he hated me. Which is kind of funny considering how well we ended up getting along.
The contrast between that first week and the first week I just had is marked. Everyone has been so nice! The histotechs have said that they're happy that things are getting grossed in earlier so they have more fixation time (the current PA was promoted and spends her days dealing with management duties, leaving the evenings for grossing) and my boss is more relaxed because the grossing has been delegated. I'm glad to be useful and appreciate that they've gone out of their way to be so welcoming. I need to work on getting everything grossed by 5 (my going-home time) and try hard not to screw anything up!
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