engleski

Necessity of the critical values informing- clinicians needs

According to EN ISO 15189 critical values reporting is one of the most important requests. IFCC WG-LEPS (Working Group for Laboratory Errors and Patient Safety of International Federation for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine) recommends critical values reporting as quality indicator 22 (QI-22). Recent investigation in our laboratory showed that only 35% critical results were communicated to physicians. However, the results are easily available through laboratory information system. The aim of the study was to examine physicians’ requisites for immediate alert when critical results are obtained. To obtain physicians’ needs for critical values alerts, we created a questionnaire which contains 9 questions with yes/no answers and one question with free text entry answer. Questions include physicians’ attitude with regard to immediate warning when laboratory obtains critical results, qualifications of the laboratory personnel who are reporting critical results and personal informing of critical results (specialist in laboratory medicine-clinician). Also, clinicians were asked to specify laboratory tests which require immediate notification if critical results are observed. The questionnaire was answered by 49 clinicians: intensive care units (22/49 ; 45%), internal medicine department (12/49 ; 25%) and urology (14/49 ; 29%). The responders were mainly senior specialists with > 5 years of experience (23/49 ; 47%) and residents (11/49 ; 22%). Results have shown that clinicians like to be warned about critical results (32/49 ; 65%) ; qualifications of the laboratory personnel who report critical results are not important (29/49 ; 59%) ; clinicians would ask for advice specialist in laboratory medicine if they consider it necessary (39/49 ; 80%) ; no need to inform clinician personally (32/39 ; 65%). Further, urgent informing of critical results is needed for electrolytes, glucose, haemoglobin, prothrombin time, platelets and troponin. Results of the study showed that professionals in our laboratory have to raise awareness on necessity of critical results informing.

critical values; quality indicator;

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