LABORATORY MANAGEMENT
track. During that process there was more manual work as we dealt with stand-alone analysers. To make the track fit, the laboratory
required some minor enabling works, then it was a staged process of installing then validating the new analysers, making sure the various parts of the system worked. It was a tricky process and we learned a lot through it. Beckman Coulter supported us and we’ve had dedicated engineers to help us solve the issues that we faced. We picked Croydon to be first because the team here were ready, they are a good team with strong clinical leadership and are operationally really resilient. We knew the changes to the laboratory at St George’s would be much bigger, so getting the IT solution right here at Croydon would be a great step along the line.
PiP: How is the new equipment performing so far? SB: We’re still very early in the programme, it’s a much bigger operation than just switching over one analyser. We’re in the middle of a fundamental change, affecting over a hundred platforms across the network, all while continuing to deliver services on the old platforms. That’s not a small amount and so we expect lumps and bumps and bruises. We’ve already seen the potential this equipment has here because it flows brilliantly. Currently we’re still manually loading lots of samples – to realise the full benefits and increase the automation we need to standardise the way we receive samples in the laboratory. Currently I believe we’re entering into the optimisation phase in the Croydon laboratory. We declared on 1 June that we’d moved from deployment to BAU (business as usual), which is a sign that we’re ready to get to that point where
The whole expectation of health care demands a timely result. You’ve got to share that result and provide that coverage
you let the new equipment loose. That’s to say, it’s ours now – we have to manage it.
PiP: How important has staff training proved? SB: The whole process has been a learning exercise we’ve been on along with Beckman Coulter – we’ve really been learning together about how the analysers and track can best work together and navigating the lumps and bumps I mentioned. We’ve sent staff out to see other laboratories using Beckman Coulter equipment and how they work, as well as three members of staff here at Croydon getting extra training from Beckman Coulter. We recognise that training is a big,
big area. Those who have received training from Beckman Coulter are our super users, and they will take a lead on getting all the staff trained to operate the new equipment. We’re now training internally and we have training provision baked into each year of our contract too. The key is Beckman Coulter train us to train ourselves. And we’ve bought into a concept called performance partnership with Beckman Coulter. And what performance partnership allows us to do is to equip our staff with a performance culture ethos.
PiP: What have been the key benefits so far in terms of your workflows and laboratory staff? SB: At one site, we were at around 60% auto validation, which is too low. So you’re spending time manually labelling and loading the samples. If we can get that up to 85%, that means more than half of the time previously spent on validation is freed up. Our staff no longer need to sit in
front of a computer to free it up because this great new technology means our laboratory staff are comfortable that the result can be auto validated. So then more time can be focused on those samples and patients which really need our attention: do they need a follow-up test?; do they need an add- on test? They might need a rerun or a dilution or whatever that is. Now you’ve got time to focus on that. So in those scenarios, releasing that time allows us to focus on the samples that need more time because of the nature of the result. As we identify time that is freed up, we want to log all the nonconformities, so we can understand where that nonconformity is coming from. Is it always the same practice? Is it always on a particular day? Is it something we can really try and get to grips with? At the moment, we haven’t got time to interrogate that because we’re too busy. Freeing up staff time can allow people to take advantage of extra opportunities, and us as a laboratory and as an employer to be more flexible.
New analysers from Beckman Coulter in the Croydon laboratory. 86
PiP: What have been the benefits to your patients? SB: By default, the most abnormal samples take the most time to deal with. Because you need to understand the significance of the result. You need to be able to do a differential diagnosis to advise the clinicians or to involve your consultants and clinical staff. That’s not going to be a matter of minutes – it could turn into hours while you try and go through that process. Patients need a timely service. It’s not the fastest search you need because you’ve got to have the result where you need it, when you need it, giving the information. In the future, patients will want their own understanding of that on an app coming through to them on the day of the test. They’re not going to wait for us to tell them ‘we know what it is’. The whole expectation of health care demands a timely result. You’ve got to share that result and provide that coverage. So by transforming how we work and understanding those patients that have unexpected, abnormal results that are suggestive of something worrying – we can focus more on that. But you also
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