In the pathology department, I worked with the surgical pathology assistant. The pathology department is a lot less computer-based than the lab. The slide labels are written by hand. The filing system is mostly by hand. Each specimen is given an ID that conveys information; such as this specimen is the 400th specimen of the year at this hospital. The pathology lab goes through about 5000 specimens a year or about 17 a day, while the lab goes through a few hundred a week.
While the lab normally has four lab technicians and four phlebotomists at any time of the day or night, the pathology department contains the pathology assistant and the pathologist and is only open during normal working hours. In the morning, rings of -25 degrees Celsius ice are made in case slides need to be made quickly. The specimen would be frozen within ice, and then a grinder would take off thin shavings until it reached the right piece of the tissue. The sliver would be put in a slide.
There is also a procession of dipping juices to self-dye specimens. Usually, intriguing tissue pieces are put in tiny hole punched boxes called cassettes to be dumped in formalin, which will eventually be sent off to become slides. If slides need to be made quickly, they’re dipped in water, various alcohols and dyes, in a specific order, for specific times, until they eventually become dyed in purples and pinks.
Slides need to be made very fast during procedures such as cancer surgeries where the surgeon needs to know how far the cancer spread so that they know how much they need to remove. After slides are made, the pathologist looks at them either in the tissue room or at their desk, under a microscope, and look for signals of disease.
There is also a procession of dipping juices to self-dye specimens. Usually, intriguing tissue pieces are put in tiny hole punched boxes called cassettes to be dumped in formalin, which will eventually be sent off to become slides. If slides need to be made quickly, they’re dipped in water, various alcohols and dyes, in a specific order, for specific times, until they eventually become dyed in purples and pinks.
Slides need to be made very fast during procedures such as cancer surgeries where the surgeon needs to know how far the cancer spread so that they know how much they need to remove. After slides are made, the pathologist looks at them either in the tissue room or at their desk, under a microscope, and look for signals of disease.
Usually, there are sigmoid colons with diverticulitis, gastrointestinal scrapings from esophageal cancer (for example), placentas from pregnancies that were strange or didn’t go as planned, appendixes with appendicitis, gallbladders with gallstones and swollen to twice their normal size. The colons are cleaned out and pinned to wax while they sit in formalin for a few hours. Placentas stay in their bucket. Everything else goes in a Ziploc bag with formalin to wait for the pathologist to do a macroscopic inspection. 
slide of placenta lining
sigmoid colon
slide of placenta lining
sigmoid colon
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