Biochemistry team go extra mile to keep testing service going

UHNM’s biochemistry team went above and beyond recently to ensure the efficient continuation of patient sample testing. The main sample analysers at Royal Stoke University Hospital repeatedly went down over a 12-day period, including complete loss of one of the two analytical lines. County Hospital’s biochemistry team stepped into help and the laboratory at County was utilised to analyse a proportion of RSUH workload.

Biochemistry staff have been given the Team of the Month award in recognition of their work.

Andrew Clarke, Biochemistry, Immunology and POCT Manager, said: “Biochemistry staff including biomedical scientists, medical laboratory assistants, clinical scientists, specimen reception staff and couriers provided significant additional voluntary support to minimise any unavoidable delays in result turnaround times and thus reduce disruption for service users and ensure there was no impact on patient care. This included working overtime to clear the request backlog at RSUH, extending the County hospital laboratory opening to 24 hours, providing overnight standby cover at County and driving the pathology courier van to provide additional transport between hospital sites. The whole team were really flexible and worked extremely hard to address what was a very challenging situation. We on the senior management team are really proud of their response.”

The UHNM biochemistry department performs over 10 million tests each year using approximately 200 separate analytical methods.