General Information

Location

The main laboratory is situated at Craigavon Area Hospital and provides a comprehensive Haematology, Chemical Pathology, Microbiology and Histo/Cytopathology service. Additional laboratory facilities are located at Daisy Hill Hospital site.

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Normal laboratory hours

Monday - Friday: 9 am - 5 pm - Saturday: 9 am - 12 am

The Mortuary at Craigavon Area Hospital is open from 8.30 am – 4.30 pm Monday – Friday and 8 am – 1 pm Saturday and Sunday.

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Service on public holidays and weekends

Some non-urgent but essential investigations may need to be carried out over weekends and Public Holidays. These may be done by the BMS's on call if requested by the doctor. It would be appreciated if requests are confined to essential investigations only and special arrangements are made to ensure that samples are delivered to the laboratory as promptly as possible. Please contact the laboratory about these tests and also indicate where and to whom these reports should be telephoned.

A pathologist and mortuary technician are on call at weekends and on public holidays for autopsies. Requests for autopsies at these times should be directed to the mortuary technician who can be contacted through Craigavon Area Hospital switchboard.

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Emergency service

The following tests are available as an emergency: -

Specimens

Routine: All specimens must be labelled, placed in the special plastic bag attached to the appropriate request form, and sealed. Specimens must not be sent in standard envelopes via the internal post.

High Risk: All specimens from suspected or known cases of TB, CJD, hepatitis B & C, AIDS and HIV infection etc must be treated as "high risk" specimens. They must be sent to the laboratory in an appropriate container, which must be labelled with a special biohazard label "Danger of Infection - Take special care". A biohazard label must be attached to both specimen and request form. Blood specimens from "high risk" patients must be taken by an experienced doctor and not by paramedical staff. Gloves must be worn during venepuncture. The use of plastic aprons and eye protection is also advised, if considered appropriate.

All persons who use the laboratory service are reminded that they must comply with the legal requirements under the Health and Safety at Work Order (NI 1978) and COSHH regulations (1988, revised 1995).

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Request forms

Please fill these in correctly with as much detail as possible. Without full patient details computers cannot store accurate records, and without full clinical details the laboratory cannot make useful comments and may perform inappropriate tests. Please use the addressograph labels where they are available. Use only the dedicated label for specimen containers. Addressograph labels must not be used on Blood Transfusion specimen containers because of the risk of wrongly labelling a specimen, which can lead to untold clinical and medicolegal problems. The request form must contain:

• Date & time collected.

• Nature of sample requested.

• Tests requested.

Other information

• Clinical details relevant to investigation.

• For microbiology please state antibiotic used.

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Containers , swabs and transport media

Specimen containers and request forms are available from each of the three laboratories. In case of difficulty please contact the appropriate laboratory staff who will be pleased to help.

Microbiology

Sputum
Urine
Faeces container Version are available with or without spoon
CSF containers (plastic universal with blue label marked "CSF")
Swabs with transport medium
Tubes for clotted blood
Blood Culture
container for fluid from sterile site (except CSF and blood culture) with anticoagulant) Pemasal swabs (on request only) for Bordetella pertussis (whooping cough) Chlamydia collection kits (with Instructions) Viral Transport Medium (this should be light pink/orange, discard when deep pink/cerise) Fungal collection kit for fungal specimens e.g. scrapings, (Dermapak) Transport media for Helicobacter pylori	Available on request from laboratory

F.B.C.	Glandular fever, Direct Coombs, Reticulocyte Count, Differential WCC, Hb electrophoresis, Kleihauer, HbA1C, Parathormone, ACTH – transport to Lab on ice
I.N.R., A.P.T.T., Coag. Screen
E.S.R
Group & Crossmatch
U. & E., LFTs, Bone profile etc .	All general Biochemistry tests, Serology tests, Antibiotic tests, Antibiotic Assays For lead& other metals, please contact Biochemistry Dept. CAH ext. 2660
Used in I.C.U. for U & E Used for high dependency patients	Osmotic Fragility
Blood glucose
Fertility Hormones
Blood Culture Bottles 10ml each bottle

WARD ACCESS TO RESULT

Wards at each of the three acute hospitals in the Southern Area should have access to the pathology computer system. If you are not able to access the pathology computer you should contact your local I.T. staff.

Access involves three main steps:

1. Access to the network
2. Logging on to the Pathology System
3. Retrieving results.

It should be remembered that the accurate and easy retrieval of results requires full details to be supplied to the laboratory in the first instance. The full hospital number is essential and this includes prefix letters e.g. DHH012345 or CAHE12345 or STH09999 etc.

Access to the network

The precise mechanism may vary locally. If your workstation is a PC then normally you will have an icon labelled 'Labs' and a double click will display the login prompt.

If your terminal is a 'dumb' terminal such as a VT320 or VT420 for PAS etc., then you will normally have to log off PAS (if connected). Hold down the control key and press XX. This will give a prompt such as NET I/O>. Typically pressing 'S 0' will connect you to PAS and 'S 1' will connect you to the laboratory. (Local variations may occur).

Logging on

At the 'Login' prompt type your username (note this is case sensitive). At the password prompt type your password. It is essential that the password is not disclosed to anyone.

A screen similar to that below will be displayed. Enter the patient's Full hospital number if known. If the hospital number is not known press the enter key and the second screen will be displayed. You may enter as much or as little of the surname and forename as you wish. The search will however return a greater number of potential matches if the data supplied is not specific.

Select your patient from the list and press 'enter'. The Profile screen will be displayed.

Pressing enter at the Profile line will display all tests for that patient starting with the most recent. Select the profile you require and press enter.

Having selected the appropriate profile the results will be displayed starting with the most recent. Pressing 'P' will show the previous result.
At any stage pressing PF4 ( the '-' key on a PC's numeric keyboard ) will step back through the program.

All user's are reminded of the need to ensure confidentiality of patient's results at all times and of the importance of logging out of the system when finished.

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