Technology: Ensuring effective point-of-care testing

Liz Grint, Radiometer Ltd., discusses some of the key considerations of effective point-of-care testing in the Technology section of Clinical Services Journal's April issue

Point-of-care (POC) testing offers a range of benefits for patients, medical staff and laboratory personnel, providing faster results and accelerating clinical decisions, while reducing the urgent testing burden for hospital laboratories.

Safety first

Patient and staff safety must be the first consideration when transferring testing frorn the laboratory to the point of care. Unlike laboratory staff, staff on wards and in clinics are rarely trained in 'best practice' laboratory techniques for sample handling and preparation, and so sample preparation should involve as few manual steps as possible to avoid the risk of needle-stick injuries, contamination of samples and exposure of stalf and patients to potentially hannful materials.