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12. Action Plan: Diagnostic Services
As a matter of clinical governance and patient safety, diagnostic services should be adequately resourced to support rapid clinical diagnosis and to maximise appropriate antimicrobial prescribing.
In particular:
- microbiology laboratories should implement the antimicrobial sensitivity testing methods and implementation of automated sensitivity testing as recommended by the Scottish Microbiology Forum Antimicrobial Sensitivity Testing subgroup
- at a local level, turnaround times for antibiotic sensitivity tests should be as short as possible, and the advice made available timeously to the clinician at the point of delivery of care to the patient
- routine reporting of sensitivity to antimicrobial agents which are not included in the local antimicrobial policy should be avoided
- laboratories should implement rapid diagnostic methods such as Polymerase Chain Reaction, antigen testing or other markers of infection, where consensus exists around methodology, and normally in conjunction with advice from the Scottish Microbiology Forum
- Reference laboratories have a role to play in the monitoring of resistance and emergence of new resistance mechanisms. Service level agreements between Reference Services and HPS should be reviewed to ensure this is included within their remit
- Turnaround times for disseminating results from reference laboratories need to be rapid to be clinically meaningful and thereby facilitate control of spread of target organisms and to disseminate reports at a local and national level.
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