This is a practice-based thesis commissioned by Lapland Central Hospital Pathology Profit Centre. The aim is to improve function of the profit center’s processes by creating working instructions which are the products of this thesis. Working instructions standardizes working methods and ensures their accuracy. The users of working instructions are profit center’s laboratory assistants. Other possible users are biomedical laboratory science students and new employees who are familiarized with the work tasks.

The result of this thesis is two different working instructions “Orienting and embedding the samples” and “Sectioning the samples”. The latter working instruction consists cutting with both a sliding microtome and rotary microtome with section transfer system. In the working instructions, the processes are experienced step by step so that the work is reproducible. Instructions also include information about work safety.

In future, a standardized template could be created to simplify the compilation of working instructions. Predetermined layout, style and format would add functionality to the template. As a bigger project, it would be possible to build up a textbook from the working instructions. This would require expanding the knowledge basis and adapting the working instructions more general.