Hi Paul,
When I moved from Leeds to Canada I
was impressed that this is the way the worked. At that time still only did STATs but the technologist positions were either permanent evening, or nights or some hospitals had full rotation of staff i.e. everyone did one week of nights about once every 8 weeks.
I switched the staff to no longer doing STATs 20 years ago and now they do everything as it comes in including serology, special proteins tumour markers
etc. i.e. everything automated that we did during the day that did not have specific days/batches e.g. not insulin/BNP/light chains. This has resulted in better patient care and is cheaper for the laboratory as we do not retrieve samples to finish work, we
do all analysis on one primary tube (except serology as we keep the tube clean to avoid any risk of cross contamination) .We also do the routine maintenance on the late afternoon/evening shift and the night shift when the workload decreases.
I hope this is helpful.
Elizabeth Mac Namara
Dept. Diagnostic Medicine
Jewish General Hospital
McGill University, Montreal
From: Clinical
biochemistry discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Eaton Paul (EAST SUSSEX HEALTHCARE NHS TRUST)
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2014 4:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Night Working
Dear mailbase
Sorry this is not a clinical query but this is such an excellent forum any replies would be most welcome. Our trust like many is finding it increasingly difficult to
provide a safe, high quality out of hours service (presently supported with a number of agency staff which is expensive and not ideal on many levels) and one solution I have been considering is the employment of suitably qualified permanent night staff to
maintain the service, I would like to know if anyone has experience of this and how it affects your laboratory? Is it still a quality service?
I value any advice, guidance you are willing to share
Paul
Paul Eaton
Lead BMS
Clinical Biochemistry
Clinical Support Division
East Sussex Healthcare
01323 417400 ex 4249
01424 755255 ex 8592
