“The pursuit of Point of Care accreditation – realistic goal or unachievable challenge?” 1st November 2022

Since starting my career as a Biomedical Scientist in Tayside, just over 12 years ago, almost every interview I’ve ever had has always had a question about accreditation… “Can you tell us the purpose of accreditation and how you can contribute to it?” or a different combination of the same words.

Whilst I’ve cobbled together reasonable responses, most of which include catch-words such as “service user confidence”, “assurances” and “meeting standards,” I have always found myself wondering, is accreditation actually worth it?

For the main laboratories under ISO 15189, I’d have to say it probably is. Most main labs will have quality managers, training teams, seniors and managers, all responsible for a discreet number of staff and a set amount of processes. Albeit a huge task, once accreditation is achieved, it should be pretty easy to keep hold of it. But for Point of Care? The challenges for this are just so different.

Point of Care can be a chaotic mix of rogue users, with uncontrolled devices kindly handed in by reps and results that are produced and acted upon that mean nothing without suitable management from an accredited (definitely maybe?) Point of Care team. Moreover, every site has their own set of procedures…..these include but is by no means an exhaustive list, IT governance requirements, clinical governance, funding issues, national framework restrictions and usually a wide variety of training methods for very similar, if not the same, devices.

 With that in mind, would we say that the pursuit of ISO 22870 accreditation is feasible? Perhaps if there was a collaborative platform that pulled together point of care expertise? And so, POCT-for-scot was born. 

A collaboration of almost two decades of laboratory and subsequently Point of Care experience, my co-founder and trusted colleague and I came up with the idea for POCT-for-Scot. We will use our knowledge and share our successes, in the hope that you will join us on this journey, to bring together the best Point of care minds and benefit a rapidly evolving healthcare system and its patients.

I’ll keep you posted, any tips, advice or general moral support will be most welcome.

Much love,

Robyn.