Friends, Colleagues and Laboratory Heroes

Freida L. Carson: friend, colleague and laboratory hero

Some of the people who teach a pathologist the most are not pathologists.

I served on the CAP/NSH Histotechnology Committee from 2004 to 2006. As a junior member, I had the good fortune to learn from Dr. Freida L. Carson. She was a friend and a colleague, and one of my laboratory heroes.

Freida taught me about histotechnology and getting it right at the beginning of my career. She literally wrote the book: Histotechnology: A Self-Instructional Text, which grew to five editions.

Her work went beyond the textbook. She directed the histopathology laboratory at Baylor in Dallas and helped develop the pilot that became the joint CAP/NSH Histology Quality Improvement Program, HistoQIP. The goal was practical: help laboratories assess slide quality and improve it.

That lesson still matters. Before a pathologist can interpret a slide, the tissue has to be processed, embedded, sectioned and stained well. Digital pathology does not remove that foundation. The slides we make determine the slides we scan.

Freida died on January 11, 2022, at 95. In the National Society for Histotechnology's tribute, a colleague remembered her advice: "Get involved with your profession."

She did, and she helped generations of others do the same.

Read the NSH tribute to Freida: https://www.nsh.org/blogs/sharon-kneebone1/2022/01/14/a-tribute-to-freida-carson

For education only. This page does not offer personal medical advice.