Contact and find us
Derby
Telephone: 01332 789 400
Location:
Pathology, Level 5
Royal Derby Hospital
Uttoxeter Road
Derby
DE22 3NE
Burton
Telephone: 01283566333 ext 4048
Location:
Pathology,
Lower ground floor
Queen's Hospital Burton
Opening times
Core laboratory opening times
Royal Derby Hospital
Monday to Friday, 7am - 9pm
Queen's Hospital Burton
Monday to Friday, 9am - 6pm
Outside of core hours, there is a limited service for analysis.
The combined laboratory at the Royal Derby Hospital is open 24 hours per day for the receipt of samples.
Availability of clinical advice and interpretation
Patients
Results can only be issued to the requesting physician or unit and will not be given to patients directly under any circumstances.
Authenticity of callers is checked in order to protect the confidentiality of patient personal details for information governance purposes.
Colleagues
Please check Lorenzo, Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE) or Meditech for all test results.
No results will be emailed.
At Derby
If results cannot be accessed, please contact:
Telephone: 01332 789400
The results line is available Monday to Friday, 8am - 7pm (excluding Bank Holidays).
For urgent out of hours advice and information, call switchboard via 01332 340131.
Blood sciences clinical advice
Available Monday to Friday, 8am - 7pm.
Telephone: 01332 789383
Haematology clinical advice
The consultant on-duty for Haematology is available via switchboard:
Telephone: 01332 340131
At Burton
If results cannot be accessed, please contact:
Telephone: 01283 511511 (ext 4048)
The results line is available Monday to Friday, 9am - 6pm.
For urgent out of hours advice and information, call switchboard via 01283 511511.
Haematology clinical advice
The consultant on-duty for Haematology is available via switchboard:
Telephone: 01283 511511.
Request forms
Please use electronic requesting through Lorenzo and Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE).
Each specimen request must be accompanied by the relevant request form, it is vital the forms are legible and completed fully. The location and requesting source must be completed for the results to be sent out. Failure to do so may lead to specimens being inappropriately dealt with or not being analysed at all.
Blood sciences
Electronic requesting is always advised. Manual requests will only be accepted if the requesting source does not have access to electronic requesting. The requesting source and clinician must be completed, with no abbreviations.
Blood transfusion
These request forms must contain all the relevant information available and be signed by the requesting medical officer or authorised nurse. This is a medico-legal requirement.
Instructions for samples
Instructions for transportation of samples
Samples should be sent to the laboratory with minimum delay. Delays in sample delivery to the laboratory can compromise the accuracy of many analyses. Where blood serum is required for routine analysis, centrifugation should occur within 6 hours. Samples more than 6 hours old can look normal but may already begin to show increasing potassium and falling glucose concentrations.
If the container is undated, the reported results may be grossly misleading. ALWAYS put the time and date the sample was taken on the request form.
How to submit samples
Addressograph labels
If used on request forms, addressograph labels must be affixed to all three copies of the multi -part form. Alternatively, a ball point pen, pressed firmly, should be used to fill out forms. Addressograph labels should not be used on any sample containers; please note that samples with addressograph labels for crossmatching will not be accepted under any circumstances and will require a repeat sample to be taken. Users are referred to the Trust's written policy on taking blood samples.
Specimen labelling
The sample container must be clearly labelled with a minimum of the patient's surname, forename, and one of the following three items, the hospital number, NHS number or date of birth.
These details should exactly match the information supplied on the request form.
This is to allow the unequivocal identification of the patient. If this minimum requirement is not met this may lead to sample rejection.
The sample should also be labelled with the ward or department, and the date and preferably time the sample was taken.
For medico-legal and safety reasons unlabelled or mislabelled specimens must always be repeated where possible.
Important: Blood transfusion samples must be fully labelled by hand and signed by the person obtaining the sample. There must be four patient identifiers that match on both the sample and the request form these are surname, forename, DOB plus one of the following: hospital number / address / NHS number.
Storage of samples
For information regarding the storage and labelling of samples in primary care, please download the following document:
Out of Hours service
At Derby
During out-of-hours, limited biomedical scientists are on duty to respond to all haematology, biochemistry and blood transfusion emergency requests. Only a limited number of investigations are available during these periods.
Red bag urgent requests will be processed within four hours.
At Burton
A&E, Coronary Care Unit (CCU), Intensive Care Unit (ICU), High Dependency Unit (HDU) are processed urgently, for any other location please call the laboratory, or on call biomedical scientist to ensure the samples are processed.
Other tests not available on demand will require prior discussion and agreement with consultant staff, which can be contacted via the biomedical scientist or switchboard.
Urgent requests
Derby urgent requests
Chemistry/Haematology Urgent Requests
Urgent samples must be placed in a red "urgent sample" bag, supplies of which can be obtained from Pathology Reception.
No phone call is required for these requests if samples are placed in red bags, unless there is a particular problem with the sample or specific conditions relating to the request.
The laboratory will prioritise these tests upon receipt.
Immunology urgent requests
All immunology tests that are required urgently must first be discussed with the Immunology department.
Test will only be processed urgently if agreed by the lab, following initial discussion on the telephone.
Telephone: 01332 788502
Burton urgent requests
On the QHB site, samples are sent down using the normal sample bags, A&E, CCU and ITU/HDU samples are treated as urgent, for other locations to ensure samples are processed urgently a call to the laboratory is required.
Appending "urgent" or "please phone" on the request form or ordering as "urgent" in Meditech will not give the request priority.
Other tests are available urgently during normal working hours but only by prior discussion with the laboratory.
Please note:- This range of tests, when handled non-urgently (with the exception of the tests listed under the "after discussion with a consultant" column) are normally processed within four hours of receipt for inpatients and within one working day of receipt for GP and outpatient requests.
What's new
Changes to the creatinine method and reference ranges
The Serum creatinine method at Queen's Hospital Burton Laboratory is changing to 'enzymatic' from Sunday 2 April 2023. The current assay (Jaffe) was first described a century ago and is no longer able to perform to modern performance standards. These performance standards have recently been tightened and are enforced nationally. Enzymatic creatinine is the method which has been recommended nationally, because of better precision (reproducibility) and less interference from glucose and bilirubin leading to more accurate results.
Users should be aware that there may be a one-off change in creatinine and therefore eGFR results for some patients due to the change in the reagent. The exact effect will depend on the creatinine level and other individual biochemistry but it could be up to 10%. It will be important that serial results on the same patient pre and post method change are interpreted in light of this and if such a change is noted after the reagent change it is advised to repeat the test to confirm trend.
Please note: The method change alone is not significant enough to trigger AKI alerts so these results should continue to be managed according to current clinical protocol.
A summary comment will be added to all relevant results from the laboratory computer system.
If you have any questions about the method change, which has been agreed by the renal consultants at the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton, please contact Dr Nitin Kohle (via renal secretaries) or Julia Forsyth or Sarah Knowles on 01332 789383.