Referring urgent samples to RCI where you require results in less than 5 working days

When referring samples to RCI where you require results in less than 5 working days, please telephone your RCI laboratory to discuss your requirements, and alert the laboratory to the incoming sample.

We have had several recent incidents where we haven’t received a phone call and delays to patient care have resulted. This request applies to all cases where crossmatched blood is required and all investigations of positive fetomaternal haemorrhage screen.

The call enables our staff to:

• expect your sample
• make enquiries if it hasn’t arrived on time
• plan workload to achieve the required turnaround time
• and in some cases, to collect blood from other centres to crossmatch when the specification is difficult to meet.

This is especially important outside core hours when boxes containing non-urgent samples will not be opened.

The contact details for our RCI laboratories is available on the back of our request forms and on the RCI page of the Hospitals and Science website.

Tracey Tomlinson, Head of Laboratory - RCI Colindale