Donald Penner and the origin of the Pathologists' Assistant profession in Canada/Donald Penner et l'origine de la profession d'assistant en pathologie au Canada

This article describes the beginning of the pathologists' assistant profession in Canada. Pathologists' assistants perform delegated medical tasks in the surgical pathology gross room and the autopsy suite under the supervision of a licensed pathologist. Donald W. Penner at the Winnipeg General Hospital hired 20-year-old Larry Bluhm in 1966; Penner and his colleagues trained him, and later David Maughan and others, to gross surgical pathology specimens. Penner's innovation, which simultaneously improved and standardized the handling of surgical pathology cases in the gross room as well as addressed pathologist workload issues, predated the first American university-based training program for pathologists' assistants at Duke University, which opened in 1969. Penner initially called these gross room assistants "tissue dieners." In August 1969, Penner hired 25-year-old Peter Stewart, who had an undergraduate degree from University of Manitoba, to work in his autopsy room. Stewart was hired as a pathologists' assistant and not as a tissue diener, likely so that there could be no confusion between his role and those of the WGH autopsy dieners who were already performing eviscerations and cleaning bodies. Stewart's role was to assist various pathologists performing roughly 1,300 medico-legal autopsies per year. He functioned semi-autonomously, including reviewing histories, performing autopsies and drafting preliminary autopsy reports, all under the supervision of an attending pathologist. In 2003, the University of Manitoba pathology department started the first university-based pathologists' assistant training program in Canada. All of these historical events are described based upon eyewitness accounts. Le present article decrit les debuts de la profession d'assistant en pathologie au Canada. Les assistants en pathologie effectuent des taches medicales dans les salles d'examen macroscopique et d'autopsie, sous la supervision d'un pathologiste autorise. En 1966, Donald W. Penner de l'Hopital general de Winnipeg a embauche Larry Bluhm, alors age de 20 ans. Le Dr Penner et ses collegues ont enseigne a M. Bluhm, puis a David Maughan et a d'autres, a faire l'examen macroscopique d'echantillons de pathologie chirurgicale. Cette innovation, qui a simultanement permis d'ameliorer et de normaliser la gestion des cas de pathologie chirurgicale dans la salle d'examen macroscopique, en plus de reduire la charge de travail des pathologistes, remonte a avant l'ouverture du