ADVER TISEMENT FEA TURE Achieving POCT
accreditation for the UK’s largest blood gas service
While provision for point-of-care testing (POCT) is growing hugely, UKAS ISO 15189 accreditation for such services is still in its infancy. Haval Ozgun, POCT Manager and Network Lead at South West London Pathology, explains how his service successfully gained accreditation.
With trained biomedical scientists in situ and robust quality systems in place, accreditation in clinical laboratories is well established, ensuring accurate results for patients’ records. However, point-of-care testing (POCT) UKAS ISO 15189 accreditation is still in its infancy, with very few sites yet achieving it due to the complexity of multiple POCT locations, analysers, and personnel, all beyond a traditional lab environment. As the UK’s largest UKAS ISO 15189:2012 and ISO 22870
accredited POCT service, South West London Pathology (SWLP) provides a near unique example of how POCT can now be considered a safe and clinically effective pathology discipline in its own right.
Accreditation vision
SWLP is the largest UKAS ISO 15189:2012 POCT blood gas accredited site in the UK. Serving a population of over 3.5 million people, the hub for this POCT pathology service is based at St George’s Hospital,
Tooting, overseeing four other hospital sites and many community settings, with over 10,000 service users. To achieve this complex, large-scale accreditation, SWLP POCT
Manager and Network Lead, Haval Ozgun, decided to view POCT as a ‘laboratory without walls’, requiring quality assurance and governance to ensure the safe and effective management and use of POCT analysers across all care settings. Haval explained: “One of the biggest problems in POCT is that it’s generally seen as out of the scope of the main pathology department because activities take place outside the laboratory. So, we’ve changed that. We’ve brought all POCT inhouse and started setting it up as a standalone pathology discipline within SWLP to ensure the necessary governance.” Haval’s vision is mirrored by recent POCT guidance co-published
in the UK by Te Royal College of Pathologists, Institute of Biomedical Science, and the Association for Laboratory Medicine.1
Te guidance
affirms that diagnostic testing, regardless of setting, should remain within the expert domain of trained biomedical scientists. Tis ensures that high-quality POCT is delivered within an accreditable framework. Continued overleaf
South West London Pathology is a partnership between Croydon Health
Services NHS Trust, Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and St. George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation
Trust which provides a single, integrated pathology service for five hospitals, covering 3.5 million people.
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