OSFA Station Ideas Flashcards
You are asked to introduce a new test to the laboratory what should you consider?
- Is there clinical need for the test? (severity, incidence, expected workload, does another lab already provide the service, amount of evidence to support test)
- Is there clinical demand? (who would request, is it for screening/diagnostic)
- Ethical/legal scenario. (Prenatal/predictive testing, incidental findings, legal issues like sexing for family balancing and forensic work)
- Technical considerations (New/current technology, alternative testing methods [e.g. biochemical], new equipment [if current is there time available on current equipment], reagents required)
- Quality (EQA scheme, IQC steps, BPG, sensitivity/specificity, controls required/where would they come from)
- Training required (scientist and technical)
- Sample type required/target (DNA/RNA)
- Validation
- TAT
- Cost (is it replacing a current test and if so is it cheaper, if not what would need to be charged for test, reagents, equipment maintenance and service contracts, is automation possible etc, is there funding available)
- Will test need confirming by another method
- Health and safety
- Who would referral be accepted from
- How would the service be evaluated
You will be asked to discuss qualities that make a leader successful or unsuccessful and reflect on your own experience of leadership. You have 4 minutes to make notes on leadership qualities and your experience of these and then will be required to discuss these with the examiner.
Allow the trainee 4 minutes to make notes and then prompt them to begin the discussion.
Ask the following questions;
1. Please describe 3 qualities that you consider make a successful team leader
2. Give an example of when you have witnessed a successful leader or been a successful leader yourself
3. Please describe how a leader may fail
4. Given an example of when you have witnessed a leader fail or been unsuccessful as a leader yourself
5. How could this be resolved to be more successful in a similar situation in the future
- Flexibility (Change and adapt)
- Open minded
- Organised
- Good planner
- Good time management
- Sets goals
- Critical evaluation
- reflection
- LISTEN to your team
- SUPPORT your team
- ACT on their ideas
- CO-OPERATE with your team
- MOTIVATE your team
- DRIVE your team, make them PROUD
- PURSUASIVE
- HAVE FAITH in you and your team
- Be COMPASSIONATE
- INSPIRE
- PRAISE your team
You have been tasked by your Quality Manager to design a vertical audit for your clinic/laboratory. Plan how this will be carried out and what documentation/resources will be required. You may use the paper provided for notes. (6 minutes)
You will then be required to explain to a new member of staff your audit plan, including type and aims of the audit. You have not met this new member of staff before. (3 minutes)
The results of your audit identify an issue which has caused a patient’s results to be incorrect on the system (they have been mixed up with another patient with the same date of birth). Explain to the new member of staff what action is taken in such cases immediately and to avoid future incidences. (3 minutes)
A vertical audit examines all processes from sample arrival into the laboratory to reports being sent out, on one/many samples.
A responsible individual must be assigned to oversee the audit (which may be the quality manager or a nominated staff member with appropriate skills and expertise), but different stages of the audit may be performed by different people, as long as all the outcomes of each stage are recorded and reported to the nominated responsible person.
The point of the audit is to ensure conformance with the pre-examination, examination, post-examination and quality system procedures.
Audit documentation should include the name of the nominated auditor, processes audited, results obtained, if these conformed to expected standards, what corrective/preventative actions were taken in light of any non-conformities identified (including incident numbers), SOP reference numbers and versions used, names of any other individuals participating in the audit, reagents/instruments used, dates, signatures of sign-off.
Documentation should be sufficient that the audit could be repeated in exactly the same way.
The CPA (Clinical Pathology Accreditation) also recommends assigning categories of non-conformance as ‘minor’ or ‘major’.
If the incorrect information has not affected issuing results or caused any impact to the patient yet, this would be logged as a minor non-conformity, corrected with a corrective action and possibly preventative action recorded to prevent this happening in the future (perform root cause analysis to determine how this happened). If the error has caused the report to go to the wrong patient, this would be logged as an incident and would need to be logged on the hospital quality system as such, as well as the departmental quality system and would also need corrective and preventative action applied.
You have 4 minutes to prepare a brief presentation explaining the role of a clinical scientist in your specialism to a panel of members of the public. Consider including the following in your presentation;
Name and scope of your disciple/department
Example of routine test/procedures performed
Examples of your daily activities
Links and interactions with other departments / aspects of healthcare
You will have 4 minutes to present followed by 4 minutes for questions raised by the audience.
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