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Dear Stephen (and others),

Many thanks for your reply(s). You say that "CPA will wish to speak for
itself".

Perhaps I didn't make it clear that the question was asked by me on behalf
of CPA.  CPA sometimes has to make decisions from scratch and therefore
needs advice from the profession to get some idea of the views around.  This
was the point of the request for advice.  We need to develop our policy on
point of care testing and one of the suggestions that has been made to us is
that of ensuring that in hospitals urine stick testing is treated in the
same way as, for instance, blood gas analysers in the intensive care unit.

Is it a responsibility that laboratory departments can take on?  Is it
something that is valuable to do?  Do Hospitals recognise the activity as
one which if uncontrolled may cause clinical errors?  and if so are they
willing to fund a mechanism for making it accreditable?  These are the
issues that my CPA committee must discuss before we decide one way or
another whether to include these "analyses" in the spectrum of near-patient
testing activities that we ask our inspectors to investigate..

Cheers,

David.





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