Posted: September 22nd, 2016

In order to improve patient access and throughput, a management review of the requirements for a busy emergency department at a regional hospital has established the need to provide POCT for troponin and creatinine.

In order to improve patient access and throughput, a management review of the requirements for a busy emergency department at a regional hospital has established the need to provide POCT for troponin and creatinine. You have been asked by your manager to provide recommendations for the selection of appropriate POCT devices for these tests.

Your Assignment:

Provide j_u_s_t_i_f_i_c_a_t_i_o_n_ _for your choice of devices. To do this you will need to develop a selection criteria to compare the available devices. Then you will need to summarise your recommendations and consider any on-going operational procedures required in order to provide quality results for patient testing.
Include in your answer recommendations with regard to:

• _Critical evaluation of testing devices which provide results appropriate to clinical requirements (i.e. is the chosen device fit for purpose ?)
• _Pre-analytical considerations
o Instructions for patient preparation and sample collection
o Patient safety and risk management
o Operator handling & training required

• _Analytical considerations
o Frequency and type of quality control (QC)
o External quality assessment (EQA) procedures
o Device maintenance requirements

• _Post-analytical

o Instructions for the recording / reporting of results

• _Other general considerations for testing
Some background notes about this assignment:
For the successful completion of this exercise, you will need to think about all the aspects of testing for these analytes. This will include all of the quality specifications as well as the practical considerations such as user friendliness, cost, shelf-life of reagents, portability and so forth.
(N_o_t_e_:_ _T_h_i_s_ _i_s_ _w_h_a_t_ _y_o_u_ _w_o_u_l_d_ _n_e_e_d_ _t_o_ _d_o_ _i_n_ _a_ _w_o_r_k_ _e_n_v_i_r_o_n_m_e_n_t_ _i_f_ _y_o_u_ _w_e_r_e_ _a_s_k_e_d_ _t_o_ _s_e_l_e_c_t_ _a_ _n_e_w_ _i_n_s_t_r_u_m_e_n_t_ _– _b_e_ _i_t_ _l_a_b_ _o_r_ _P_O_C_T_).

To do this you would first collate the data and include it in a spreadsheet for comparison. Then once your comparison and decision is made, you would write a brief report for your manager. Such a report is called an executive summary. These summaries are only one page in length – this is because your manager is busy and just wants your conclusions with brief justifications.

Structure:

Your details: Your executive summary and Excel sheet must have your name, student number, & date as a footer to the document.

In comparing part: Excel sheet must have 4 devises for troponin and 4 devises for creatinine.

Justification = Excel spread sheet: Develop two spreadsheets (one for each analyte) to be presented in the one workbook (plus embedded as tables in the word document). Each of these spreadsheets should critically compare devices against your selection criteria.

Recommendations = Written (executive) summary: Provide a written summary justifying your recommendations. As this is an executive summary, your word document should be no more than two page of writing with a word limit of 550 for the written text.