Janice:

As we are a multiple hospital system, we generally operate 24 hours a day.
This however has not been an easy task because it is hard to find people who
are willing to work evening and night shifts.  If you look hard enough you
eventually find a few people who prefer those shifts, and sometimes it helps
to do 10 hours shifts, 4 days a week - but I have trouble getting that to
work as well.  Of course there needs to be a monetary incentive work other
shifts.

We begin our gross dictation around 10AM, and our first run is loaded with
biopsies and dermatology specimens (we do derm prep for area dermatologists)
around 12:30PM.  Our first histotech comes in at 5PM, and they then begin
embedding this run.  This tech then is responsible for cutting, staining and
getting the slides ready to roll out.  We continue on our gross dication
sometimes up to 11PM at night, so this tech would load other runs in the
evening.  We have 4 tissues processors, which allows a lot of flexibility.
At 12:30AM, another histotechs arrives, and begins another run with more
"medium" sized tissues.  Again, embedding, cutting, staining, labeling, etc.
At 4AM, our large tissue run is done and this tech begins embedding that
tissue at around 6AM several other techs arrive.  These techs also do
special stains needed for their cases - that is most simple ones like iron,
PAS, AFB, HPylori, Etc.  

When pathologists arrive at 7:30 or 8AM,  most biopsies cases are ready to
be read.  Around 10-11AM, the rest of the work is finally out.  Histotechs
remaining during the day then work on other duties, such as recuts, doing
more specials, doing ICC, cutting frozen sections for pathologists, etc. I
have lab assistants who tend to the gross room and tissue processor
maintenance, filing blocks and slides.

Hope this helps, like I said these are hard shifts to fill, and even harder
to cover when these folks are on vacation and/or ill.  Thanks