title: Additional technician tasks and turnaround time in the clinical Stat laboratory.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Many additional tasks in the Stat laboratory (SL) increase the workload. It is necessary to control them because they can affect the service provided by the laboratory. Our aim is to calculate these tasks, study their evolution over a 10 year period, and compare turnaround times (TAT) in summer period to the rest of the year.
  
  
  METHODS
  Additional tasks were classified as "additional test request" and "additional sample". We collected those incidences from the laboratory information system (LIS), and calculated their evolution over time. We also calculated the monthly TAT for troponin for Emergency department (ED) patients, as the difference between the verification and LIS registration time. A median time of 30 minutes was our indicator target. TAT results and tests workload in summer were compared to the rest of the year.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Over a 10-year period, the technologists in the SL performed 51,385 additional tasks, a median of 475 per month. The workload was significantly higher during the summer (45,496 tests) than the rest of the year (44,555 tests) (P = 0.019). The troponin TAT did not show this variation between summer and the rest of the year, complying always with our 30 minutes indicator target.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The technicians accomplished a significant number of additional tasks, and the workload kept increasing over the period of 10 years. That did not affect the TAT results.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Laboratory, Hospital Universitario de San Juan, San Juan de Alicante, Spain; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pathology, Universidad Miguel Hernandez, Elche, Spain.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salinas
authors.affiliation: Clinical Laboratory, Hospital Universitario de San Juan, San Juan de Alicante, Spain; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pathology, Universidad Miguel Hernandez, Elche, Spain.
authors.forename: Maite
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: López-Garrigós
authors.affiliation: Clinical Laboratory, Hospital Universitario de San Juan, San Juan de Alicante, Spain; Department of Clinical Medicine, Universidad Miguel Hernandez, Elche, Spain.
authors.forename: Emilio
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Flores
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pathology, Universidad Miguel Hernandez, Elche, Spain.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Leiva-Salinas
authors.affiliation: Clinical Laboratory, Hospital Universitario de San Juan, San Juan de Alicante, Spain.
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lillo
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Leiva-Salinas
mesh_terms: D002984:Clinical Laboratory Information Systems; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007755:Laboratories, Hospital; D008297:Male; D013997:Time Factors; D000078329:Workforce
keywords: health care; medical laboratory personnel; quality indicators