Policies and Procedures

Out of Hours Policy
The Histology and Microscopy Facility and its equipment are not available for out-of-hours work, due to the strict OHS requirements for both competent and inexperienced staff. Staff and students are reminded that early notice for sample work is required by the Facility, to ensure your material can be processed during the opening hours of 8am-6pm Monday to Friday by the staff. The ‘out of hours’ policy is required to protect staff and students unfamiliar with the equipment against serious injury, which could be WorkCover reportable. If such an injury was to occur, which required WorkCover reporting and investigation, the equipment would be out of action for as long as WorkCover needed to investigate. This would put the valuable work done in this Facility behind schedule for all members of the School. There could also be compensation costs, and injury management; all of which are minimised by using our highly trained and skilled staff in the Facility.

Thus, there will be no exceptions to this policy, under the responsibility and accountability requirements of the UNSW OHS Management System and Section 136 3(a) of the NSW OHS Regulation 2001.

Booking of Equipment Policy
All microscopes can be booked online only after you contact the HMU and provide your details, you will receive a username and password. Please make a note of your username and password – if your password is forgotten it cannot be traced. All details must be provided, including contact details and account details. If these details are not provided then a password will not be issued. Each user must have their own username and password – group passwords are not permitted. The online booking site can be found at: http://www.histology.med.unsw.edu.au and clicking on the Online Microscope Booking link at the bottom right of the page.

How to make a booking:
1. Go to the website http://histology.med.unsw.edu.au
2. Select bookings in the right hand column
3. Under Reservations, click on the type of instrument you wish to book
4. Select month & week using round buttons on top right of the calendar page
5. Click on desired starting time on the selected day
6. The "Add Reservation" window will open
7. Add your duration time and then your user name and password
8. Once you have completed the requested information, press "SUBMIT" & "CLOSE"


Cancellation Policy
Cancellation of bookings will be accepted at the latest the day before of the booking, otherwise charges apply. We recommend that you think carefully about the time required to complete your work on the microscope. If you fail to cancel your booking before the start time it cannot be removed and you will be charged for the booking. If you fail to use all of your allotted booking time you will be charged for the full booking.

Histology Specimen Accession
Tissue specimens for Histology, arrive to the Histology & Microscopy Unit in the fixative of their choice or 70% Ethanol. All jobs must be accompanied with a job request form which can be downloaded from the website: www.histology.unsw.edu.au.

All jobs received in the Histology & Microscopy Unit are logged in the computer and given a HMU reference number. For further enquiries please refer to this reference number.

The following information is mandatory for all jobs and must be completed by the person requesting the work otherwise the job will not be accepted by the department and will result in extended delays.
1. Name
2. Department
3. Research Group
4. Contact details
5. Name of Project
6. HUMAN/ANIMAL ETHICS NUMBER
7. Account details
8. identification of the specimen/s.
9. number of specimens
10. processing of specimens eg normal run or decalcification
11. no. of HE/special stains required
12. Other information eg specimen orientation for embedding


Training of Staff & Students Policy
Staff and students can only use equipment after completing the required training provided by a staff member or representative. On completion of training the user will be asked to sign a register of users indicating they understand how to use and care for the equipment.

Equipment Care
All reasonable care must be taken of the equipment. Oil must be cleaned from objectives and the objective wiped with ethanol. The objective should then be wiped with Windex. Microscopes should always be turned off at the end of your session. Lasers and mercury lamps may be left on during the day and the last user should turn these off at the end of the day. If damage to equipment is demonstrated due to user recklessness, then the user will be liable for the replacement cost of the equipment part.

Server Administration
Images that are saved on hard drives or on the LSM/LSM2 folders on the server are saved for a period of one month only. After this time images may be deleted without consultation with the user. It is the user’s responsibility to download their work within this one month period. If there are extenuating circumstances data may be saved for longer than this period but this must be brought to the attention of the HMU staff before this period expires. Failure to remove images because the user was busy is not an extenuating circumstance. Please note, some of our PCs are older models and therefore only able to save to CD.