Histology.. what is wrong with me?

Nursing Students Pre-Nursing

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Hello all. First post here, but I've been a lurker for a little while. At any rate. We had our first histology lab the other day. To be honest, i'm completely lost. For instance with the epithelial tissue I cannot for the life of me when looking at the cell figure out what type it is. Everything looks the same to me. Honestly, this portion of A&P is making me feel like a moron haha. Have any of you struggled with this? How did you over come it. I'm feeling overwhelmed at the moment. I do plan on going to a lab touter class tomorrow, to try and help. I'm trying to keep up with all of the material as we have a lab exam and a lecture exam in 2 weeks on all of the stuff we've covered thus far.. and with this holding me back I don't have time to keep up with the other stuff I've been learning. I'm feeling stressed already.

Thanks for the help.

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Specializes in Hospice, Palliative Care.

Good day:

Look up "histology dichotomous key" on google. It can be a great help. Resources - Penguin Prof Pages has resources in that area. Use Google Images to look up various tissue slides; you can create your own study guide using samples you've collected. Learn what's typically around each tissue type. Epithelial tissue is involved in covering, lining. So you should almost always see a lumen. There's always some form of land marks to find. You can do it.

Thank you.

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http://www.gwc.maricopa.edu/class/bio201/histoprc/prac1q.htm

Histology Lab Photo Quiz flashcards | Quizlet

Try these websites. They helped me when I was in A&P last summer. Also, if you can get "A Brief Atlas of the Human Body" second edition ISBN # 9780805373738. They have it on Amazon. You can get a new one for around $10. It'll come in handy for your class. It has histology, bones, soft tissue. Good luck!

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Specializes in ICU.

Yes, you should always see the lumen. Do you guys sketch what you see? That's what we did and it helped me tons. We had what the tissue looked like in the lab book, then we looked at it under the microscope. Then we sketched what we saw and matched it to what we saw in the book. So I then knew and understood what I was looking at. Once you understand what it is exactly that you are looking at it gets much easier.

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That's our next lab on Monday and I'm trying to read ahead so I know what to look for but it's a lot to try and remember all the different cell and tissue types! I'm hoping my Anatomy coloring book will help. I also bought the Atlas of Anatomy on Amazon and will be looking at that over the weekend! Good luck and thanks for all the websites that have been posted!!

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Yes you should always see the lumen. Do you guys sketch what you see? That's what we did and it helped me tons. We had what the tissue looked like in the lab book, then we looked at it under the microscope. Then we sketched what we saw and matched it to what we saw in the book. So I then knew and understood what I was looking at. Once you understand what it is exactly that you are looking at it gets much easier.[/quote']

Same here, we sketched what we saw. Additionally, the instructor would point out things to help us identify them.

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Ugh I had a hard time with histology too. The slides in our lab were freakin' HORRIBLE. I did look at some of the sites PP's have suggested but none of them looked like the ones we were using, so I took pictures of our actual slides by holding my camera phone up to the microscope and labelled them later to study from. Definitely ask the professor to show you the different characteristics you're looking for. And yes, if you're looking at epithelial tissue, the shapes of the cells surrounding the lumen are what you need to judge by.

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Specializes in critical care.
Hello all. First post here but I've been a lurker for a little while. At any rate. We had our first histology lab the other day. To be honest, i'm completely lost. For instance with the epithelial tissue I cannot for the life of me when looking at the cell figure out what type it is. Everything looks the same to me. Honestly, this portion of A&P is making me feel like a moron haha. Have any of you struggled with this? How did you over come it. I'm feeling overwhelmed at the moment. I do plan on going to a lab touter class tomorrow, to try and help. I'm trying to keep up with all of the material as we have a lab exam and a lecture exam in 2 weeks on all of the stuff we've covered thus far.. and with this holding me back I don't have time to keep up with the other stuff I've been learning. I'm feeling stressed already. Thanks for the help.[/quote']

For this, I specifically grabbed my instructor, asked him to look at the slide I was examining, and asked him to tell me what, on that slide, was noteworthy. He was fantastic about this, and would even say at times that the slide I grabbed simply sucked, and would find a better one when possible. Your instructor is a fantastic resource for this!

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