Clinical Laboratory Consulting

Clinical Laboratory Consulting Solutions

With the staffing and management shortages some hospitals face in their clinical laboratory, sometimes lab staff and management may desire additional continued education, refresher courses, or talks on important lab topics.

Not only are these sessions excellent for the lab staff and management, but they are also very helpful for many clinical staff as well, as they determine the best method of testing.

Below is a partial list of topics and training available from our clinical laboratory experts:

Customer service skills:

This session will involve staff in an interactive seminar where participants will identify customers in their working environment as well as instances when they are customers. They will be reminded that patients are customers because they have a choice for their health care needs. Customer service skills will be reviewed and real life situations will be discussed.

General Lab Safety:

Safety is an essential practice for laboratory workers. Most people who work in medical facilities have been trained in the practice of safety but become complacent especially when enforcement is lax. Safe laboratory practices will be reviewed along with the consequences of non compliance. This lecture may be combined with the lecture on hepatitis.

Error reduction:

This seminar will use a QM approach to error reduction. Participants will review recent errors made in the organization and brainstorm causes and prevention.

Heavy metal poisoning:

This lecture will focus on lead, mercury and arsenic poisoning. Participants will be able to indentify populations at risk for heavy metal poisoning. It will also cover consequences of heavy metal exposure, appropriate specimen collection and analysis. Point of care lead testing will be discussed.

Blood gases and electrolytes:

This lecture will review methods of blood gas analysis, specimen collection, causes of errors, clinical significance, and the importance of carboxyhemaglobin. Interpretation of Electrolyte results will also be included. Analytical errors related to electrolyte testing will be reviewed. Several case studies will be included.

Emergency Toxicology:

Toxicology assays are limited in many hospitals especially in small rural hospitals. This lecture will focus on readily available tests to assist the emergency department with the evaluation of suspected drug abuse of poisoning cases. Applications to the comatose patients are included.

Cardiac markers:

This lecture will describe current cardiac and congestive heart failure markers. Participants will be able to understand references ranges, interpretation of results and appropriate timing of specimen collection. Tests included in the seminar are BNP, Troponin, CK-MB, and inflammatory markers.

Evaluation of Iron Metabolism:

This lecture will discuss causes of anemia and iron overload. Participants will be able to identify laboratory markers of iron deficiency anemia, anemia of chronic disease. And hemochromatosis.

Hepatitis testing and liver function:

This lecture will discuss transmission and consequences of hepatitis A,B and C. Participants will be able to describe testing for hepatitis infection and associated liver function tests.

Lipid testing:

This lecture will review currently recommended testing for the evaluation of lipid metabolism. The session will include expectations of the laboratory in the performance of lipid assays. Variation in results will be discussed including biological variation and method comparisons.

Evaluation and selection of instruments:

This topic will begin with the development of criteria for evaluation and selection of laboratory equipment. If appropriate the consultant will work with management to select and implement specific instrumentation.

Quality control and proficiency testing:

This session will describe how to set up quality control charts and how to evaluate data from quality control samples using Westgard rules. Proficiency testing will also be reviewed. Participants will be able to understand the purpose of proficiency testing and the do’s and don’ts when performing testing.

Laboratory evaluation of the diabetic:

This session will discuss testing for glycated hemoglobin and micro albumin. Participants will be able to describe the different methods for glycated hemoglobins, what they measure and how to properly interpret results. Determination of micro albumin as an early indicator of diabetic nephropathy will also be discussed.

Note: Many of these topics may include testing that may not done at your facility. It is still important to know about such testing since the lab will be involved in referring the test to a reference laboratory. Thus laboratory personnel will be responsible for specimen collection, results reporting and results interpretation.

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