The Pathology laboratories at Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Trust conduct over fivefour million tests every year and are rightly regarded as the detectives of the NHS – detecting and reporting on the thousands of specimens that are sent to the laboratories every month.    Every NHS Pathology Laboratory has to be accredited and the Laboratories at Ashford and St. Peter’s have just passed their biennial inspection with flying colours.    As well as the work load generated by patients attending Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals the laboratories also deal with specimens from local GPs, community hospitals and some private hospitals.

The inspector reported after her first day on inspections of the Quality Management System (QMS) and Biochemistry service:  “Very transparent systems in place, lots of good, relevant information available on the internet” and “Good Quality Management System (QMS) in place, very well organised and well structured……easy to find your way around…….systems in use were designed to uncover problems quickly…..good evidence of an evolving quality service”.   Day 2 of inspections concentrated on the Microbiology service. The inspector noted:  “Open, honest and transparent systems in place. There was evidence of constant self-assessment, with a very impressive QMS in place which was highly developed and evolved”.

The Laboratories, which have an annual budget of over £16.41m, are staffed with 235 (189 whole time employed) highly skilled scientists and other staff who work across across five major departments:

·          Microbiology

·          Cytology

·          Biochemistry

·          Haematology and Blood Transfusion

·          Histopathology

An investment of £1.7m in 2001/02 funded the complete refurbishment of the laboratories with each department now housed in a purpose-designed suite.   The Biochemistry department is fully roboticised, one of the few in the country.    The brand new Cytology suite is the “jewel in the crown”, and was designed to allow easy access for wheelchair users.   

The inspector went on to recognise all the hard work put in by the Microbiology department staff over the preceding months and noted that staff morale was good.   She noted that the facilities were well organised, clean, tidy and uncluttered and that there was good evidence of audits taking place.   During the second week of inspections, the inspector visited the Haematology and Blood Transfusion departments and attended one of the off-site blood fridges at Woking Hospice. She noted that there was “good morale, very positive staff with good general awareness of the Quality Policy and Quality Management System”. She went on to say that there was evidence of “good communications….very impressive training and competency testing and documentation…..staff appreciate the excellent training support and opportunities”. The inspector commended the Haematology & Blood Transfusion service for the External Quality Assurance (EQA) review sheet and the rolling programme for follow up when problems were uncovered and noted that this might be a “good learning point for other departments”.

The final day of inspections was spent looking at the Cellular Pathology services (Histopathology and Cytology). The inspector recognised that the Cytology department was “very upbeat and positive, well staffed and coping well with the workload” and went on to note that there was “good monitoring of EQA performance across both labs” and “impressive COSHH and risk assessments” in place in Cytology.

Following the inspection, Dr. Andrew Laurie, Clinical Director for Pathology said, “I would like to congratulate all our Pathology staff who contributed to achieving such a positive external assessment report. This is a powerful validation of the high quality professional service that they provide for local patients and clinicians.”

The inspector issued recommendations for improvements for a number of areas during the course of the two weeks. In total, 21 recommendations were issued (5 of these applied across all departments/services) in respect of the entire Pathology services, all of which will all be addressed by the senior Pathology management team in the coming weeks. For comparison, the inspector noted that it would be usual to issue perhaps four times this number of recommendations for an entire Pathology service!

Stephen Shiel, the Pathology Services Manager said, “I think this is a tremendous endorsement of our Pathology services which we recognise as being amongst the best in the country. Staff should be proud of this achievement along with the other achievements s that they have made in recent times, including the one hour turnaround for urgent samples and the unbeatable performance of our Cervical Screening service (98% of samples reported in under two weeks).”