11th November 2022

A quote often seen during the Covid-19 pandemic was:

“We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm” – Damien Barr, May 30th 2020

This quote is essentially about equality or sometimes the lack of it and this got me thinking...... Point of Care (POC) is the only area within diagnostics that varies so much in service provision and support. A centralised laboratory will have different suppliers than others but provide similar testing repertoires. These services are almost all (especially in the NHS) governed by structures that allow ISO 15189 compliance and therefore UKAS accreditation, as that is the goal of most if not all NHS laboratories. In each of the Scottish health boards POC provision is very different. So when I think of the quote and apply this to POC I believe that it demonstrates the inequality between health boards.

Despite this inequality, POC service providers all generally have similar challenges; users, training, competency, compliance, and devices procured out with laboratory governance, so by sharing our POC journey can we all make it to calmer seas?

Steering the NHS Tayside boat is the newly formed POC Clinical Management Group. This consists of a diverse group across all areas of NHS Tayside - procurement, clinical leads, finance etc. but it’s still establishing authority and we need this group to provide POC authority and ensure all POC services have appropriate lab oversight. 

Keeping us afloat are the team including; a POC manager band 8a, senior BMS band 7 and a part time support worker band 3. Additionally, we have a rotational BMS from the Biochemistry pool of staff as the majority of our work is Biochemistry based alongside an INR service that is run from the Haematology lab with the POC manager.

This team currently manages; 250 connected glucose meters, 70 connected ketone meters, 11 outpatient HbA1c analysers, 18 blood gas analysers, 3 community based hand held gas analysers and 40 INR meters.

We are also aware of but don’t currently manage - 4 ACT analysers and 15 Hb devices in theatres. These services can only supported by the team if a staffing resource from these areas is provided. 

After much discussion surrounding the importance of laboratory oversight, just as this article got posted, each of these areas agreed to fund a staff member to the POC team to provide proper oversight and governance of these services. This has been the team’s greatest win over the last 2 years!

Now it’s your turn.........please use the contact us functionality at www.poct-for-scot.com and share with us your thoughts.

Let’s get together and use POCT-for-scot to change the narrative and build a more equally resourced Point of Care service across Scotland.

Jayne xx