Wordea abede Belay, Teshi Dere
Background: Laboratory investigations are critical elements for decision making on the appropriate patient management. However, while they are providing services different tests are become victims of mistakes at the different phases of the testing process. Particularly delivering timely test results for the clinicians is a common problem particularly in the developing countries where there is uses of limited technological advancement skilled human power.
Objective: The aim of this study was to determine laboratory turnaround time for clinical chemistry tests in outpatient department at university of Gondar comprehensive specialized hospital, Northwest Ethiopia, 2019.
Method and materials: An institution based cross sectional study was conducted at university of Gondar specialized hospital from February 24 to June 2019. A structured data collection checklist was used to collect relevant data for this research project. Data completeness was checked manually on spot during the collection process. Then, the collected data were entered into Epi-data software and exported into SPSS version 20. Mean, percent and frequency of the outcome variables was analyzed through cross tabulation as appropriated. Finally, the results of this study were presented in the form of tables, figures, and texts as appropriate.
Result: A total of 965 clinical chemistry tests were evaluated for their turnaround time. From this, the minimum and maximum turnaround times were 140 and 466 minutes, respectively. The average turnaround time was 4.37hr (262.28 minutes). The pre-analytical and post analytical phases were contributed the highest turnaround-times that contributed 37.45% and 46.3%, respectively.
Conclusion and recommendation: In this university hospital, the reported laboratory turnaround time in the outpatient department is long. Turnaround time for the critical test results should be improved. The hospital management or any other stake holders should be responsible to design the appropriate strategy to reduce this high turnaround time.