Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Back in April we posted about What Doctors know, a revealing study of "junior doctors" - what we call residents in the US. If you follow the link, and/or read the study, you'll find out that doctors don't know much about laboratory test results.
However, it could be argued that doctor ignorance isn't that critical, since the doctors can always ask their friendly neighborhood laboratorian for help and advice in test interpretation.
Alas.
In a follow-up study by a different hospital, the biochemistry service surveyed their trainee doctors. They found that 38% of these doctors were unaware of the availability of advice during normal working hours, and 85% were unaware that they could get advice on-call 24 hours a day. Most of these doctors (76%) also didn't know where they could find that advice.
So the doctors who don't know about laboratory tests also don't know you can get advice from the laboratory, or where the laboratory advice service could be contacted.
Exploring the depths of any area of human ignorance is always an infinite journey. Rather than dwell upon the failings, or fall into the training cure, it's probably better to figure out how to deliver test results with important information embedded right in the report. So the doctor who doesn't know they don't know - will nevertheless learn what they need to learn from the lab report.
The study reference can be found at:
Kathryn Wood and Charles van Heyningen, Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, Junior doctors' use of the clinical biochemistry service, Annals of Clinical Biochemistry 2009:46:82-88.
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