Our visit to Thomas Guy’s Hospital

2. Gently wipe the lining of our cheek with one end of the cotton bud.

3. Immediately dispose of the cotton bud into a beaker of a dienfectant.

4. Then we smear it on the centre of a slide.

5. After that we add a few drops of Methalyne Blue on top.

6. We then carefully put the cover slip on top trying our best to leave no bubbles.

7. We look at the specimen under a microscope in fine detail looking for cells.

8. We drew the cell as accurate as possible.

Hospital

When I first entered the hospital I straight away noticed the big poster which

In the hospital they have 3 laboratories, which is used for 'Breast Cancer Treatment'. Their labs were not that big there were only 7 people working in each laboratory. They also had a very small prep room the chemicals are labelled and are stocked up in racks. The hospital has different departments for chemistry, biology and physics. The hospitals also have to follow a safety procedure; they have to wear gloves when using chemicals and wear a white jacket when enter labs. They also have a swipe card for only authorised people to access through doors, which is only for the use of staff. They have very expensive equipment's in their labs like the immuno stainer, which was about £25.000, also the automatic cover slip machine which cost's about £15.000 the wax machine called processor cost's about 8 to 10 grand and the microtone machine was about 4 grand. They also have microscopes were 3 people can look at on slide at once and it also has a camera on top. Which costs about 4 to 6 grand. They also have one person who takes care of all the risk assessments, checking everything to see if it is right and safe.

The hospital investigates and diagnosis of an abnormality of the breast e.g. lump, pain, nipple discharge and mammogram detected. They specialise in the diagnosis of breast disease as opposed to looking at other organs, e.g. liver or brain. The pathologist makes the diagnosis by looking at tissue, using a microscope. They lab has 3 basic roles in relation to looking after the patient:

. Diagnosis: Finding out what type of breast disease the patient has got.

2. Prognosis: Finding out how the disease is going to effect the patient.

3.Treatment: Doing special tests to help decide what treatment the patient should have.

Diagnosis

Many patients come to the clinic with a variety of symptoms such as; a lump in the breast that can be felt; a lump in the breast that cannot be felt but has been detected using a special x-ray (mammogram); or a painful breast.

If a patient has a lump the surgeon will have to carry out a biopsy, which removes part or the entire lump from the patient. This piece of breast tissue is then sent down to the laboratory, were they try and find out why the lump has appeared.

The laboratory also receives 3 different types of biopsy, which range considerably in size:

. Excision Biopsy: The surgeon cuts round the entire lump and removes the whole thing.

2. Incision Biopsy: The surgeon cuts out a small piece of lump and leaves the rest in the patient.

3. Needle Core Biopsy: A small part of the lump is removed using a hollow needle. Once the needle is removed from the patient the tissue inside it is ejected.

The size of the biopsies received in the laboratory range I size from approximately 8cm to 0.2cm in diameter.

Prognosis

The hospital can tell if the patient has breast cancer by simply looking at the tissue through a microscope. If a patient has cancer that the surgeon will carry out another operation to remove the glands under the arm. If cancer is going to spread this is the first place it will go to. After that they will examine each of the glands under a microscope, if there are any malignant cells found I the glands, it shows that the cancer is quite aggressive and is starting to spread. In this case doctors will give the patient drugs to kill off any cancer cells, which 'escaped' to other organs.

Treatment

There are some cells that keep on dividing this is because a signal keeps on telling them to do so. There are special detectors, which get switched on by the signal and tell the cell to divide. In the laboratory they can run special tests to see if the detectors are present or not.

As you can see the laboratories play a very important role in finding out why the patient has a lumpy or painful breast. It is therefore essential for the hospital to follow a standard procedure.

Procedure of making a slide

. Firstly they extract the tissue from the body, which is called biopsy.

2. Then they wax the tissue in a cartridge and leave it till it dries.

3. Then using a micro toner they slice the tissue in thin slices.

4. Put in chemical solution called hemotoxilyne, which removes the wax.

5. Scoop up the specimen with slide from the solution.

6. Then the slide with the specimen is dipped into eosin.

7. It is then ready for it to be looked under a microscope, and they can take pictures of the specimen if needed with a built in digital camera.

Similarities and differences of school and hospital:

I have seen similarities and differences between how the school operates and the how the hospital operates.

Some of them were that they look at the slides under a microscope in fine detail. Also they both the hospital and school have large posters, which contain information and risks of, and how to carry out an experiment.

. Our school and the hospital differ in many ways; some of the differences are that:

2. In our school labs there is a capacity of about 30 or more students to work at once, whereas in the hospital they have only enough space for 15-20 people to work at once.

3. Our school keeps all of the chemicals in the prep room whereas the hospital has chemicals in their labs.

4. Our school prep room is bigger than our labs whereas the hospital's labs are bigger than the prep room.

5. In our school we study all of the 3 chemistry, biology and physics whereas in the hospital they have different departments for each of chemistry, biology and physics.

6. We have 5 labs in our school whereas the hospital has 3 labs.

7. There security is more advanced.

8. There equipment is more advanced.

Why are there similarities and differences?

The hospital receives a greater amount of funding than the school because the hospital deals with peoples lives and have to be very accurate in everything they do, this is why they have many expensive equipment's, such as the Immunostainer and the Micro Toner, these equipment's are needed to speed up work and to get accurate results.

The school labs are more of a classroom than a lab because we are learning and not messing working on real humans, which the hospital do, and we do not always do practical work we mostly do theory work. The hospital keep their chemicals in the labs because the workers are trained to work with chemicals and are professional's whereas school students aren't mature enough and don't have as much knowledge about chemical, so the chemicals are kept away. In our school we are learning, so we can study all three chemistry, biology and physics in one department, but the hospital need to have different departments because different qualified people work at different departments or it will get mixed up and they will have many problems. The hospital's security is high because they are dealing with very important stuff, it is not only an experiment to learn something, which is the case in school but it is working with people's lives and only authorised people can enter labs and prep with their swipe card which they have swipe to go threw the doors. In the hospital they also wears rubber gloves and white jackets this is because of hygienic reasons for the staff and for the patient so there are no infections or disease passed around. They also have very good and expensive equipment this is because they need to have accurate results because whatever they get the patients life will depend upon it. Also the equipment's saves a lot of time.

Effectiveness

Overall I think the hospital is more effective. The hospital has better equipment's due to larger funds that make the hospital a better and easier place to work at. The equipment will give them better and more reliable results, for example the automatic cover slip machine this will cover the specimen leaving no bubbles. The hospital also has better security so people inside the labs will feel safer and can work with no fear whatsoever.

Mohibur Rahman 10c

Lab Comparison Report