Ed Uthman: "...the paraffin curtain, that zone of comfort at the microscope, where the well-trained pathologist can relax with a cup of coffee and a stack of slide folders."

Edward O. Uthman (2014) Getting Out From Behind the Paraffin Curtain. Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine: January 2014, Vol. 138, No. 1, pp. 12-13.

EDITORIALS

Getting Out From Behind the Paraffin Curtain

Edward O. Uthman , MD

From Brown & Associates Medical Laboratories, LLP, Houston, Texas.

"I can summarize the most desirable of these as an eagerness to get out from behind the paraffin curtain, that zone of comfort at the microscope, where the well-trained pathologist can relax with a cup of coffee and a stack of slide folders. As viewed from behind the curtain, the ideal workday is one in which the biopsies are adequate, the histologic findings pathognomonic, and the diagnoses brief, definitive, and powerful.

As we all know, those ideal workdays are infrequent."