Centre for Laboratory Medicine and Molecular Pathology

The SJH Centre for Laboratory Medicine and Molecular Pathology is located on the grounds of the St James’s Hospital campus in the building indicated below as the Central Pathology Laboratory.  The CPL building is located inside the James’s Street entrance of the hospital, in a 2-storey red-brick building just past the Luas tracks (see map below):

Sample Reception for the laboratory is located just inside the main entrance of the CPL building on the ground floor.

Specimen Reception is open between the hours of 8am – 5pm, Monday to Friday.

If you are a patient being referred for a blood test, please access the link for Blood Testing below:

Phlebotomy (Blood Testing)

Please note: Blood Testing is by appointment only. The blood testing clinics are located off the main concourse of the main hospital building.

How to get the results of your blood test?

Your results will be sent to the doctor that requested your laboratory tests.

Please note the Laboratory cannot give out patient results directly, please contact your GP or Healthcare professional regarding your test results.

Target turn-around times for testing services are listed in the Online User Guide.

Results are reported electronically where the GP / external hospital has implemented electronic requesting systems. All GPs and external hospitals are requested to sign-up to electronic requesting systems as this ensures accurate and timely reporting of results.

Where electronic requesting is not in place the laboratory at SJH will issue a hardcopy report to the requesting clinician. TATs listed in the on-line user guide do not account for postal times.

Patients that attend the outpatient department will get their results at their next outpatient appointment.

All staff working in the St James’s Hospital are legally required under the Data Protection Act 2018 to ensure the security and confidentiality of all personal data they collect and process on behalf of patients, service users and employees.

The Department of Laboratory Medicine retains the following information in relation to each test request received, for defined minimum retention periods, based on regulatory and best practice guidelines. This information may include some or all of the following:

• Patient full name
• Patient medical record number
• Patient date of birth
• For each specimen: date/time of collection, date/time of receipt in the laboratory and date/time of report, specimen type, priority
• Clinical information provided by clinicians
• The results and where appropriate, interpretation of each test requested
• Requesting clinician and address.

The laboratory is committed to protecting the privacy of personal information of its service users and patients; and takes the appropriate precautions to protect against physical loss, damage to or inappropriate access and disclosure.  Information regarding SJH policies and procedures on patient confidentiality and data protection, can be obtained through the following link: Information Governance | St James's Hospital

This is in compliance with the HSE policy and procedures with regards to Data Protection, which can be obtained through the following link: http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/yourhealthservice/info/DP/

Consent

All procedures carried out on a patient need the informed consent of the patient.  For most routine laboratory procedures, consent can be inferred when the patient presents himself or herself with a request form and willingly submits to the usual collecting procedure, for example venepuncture.  It is assumed that when a sample is sent to the laboratory, the clinician responsible for the care of the patient has obtained the appropriate and valid consent for the test, storage and sharing of the patient's information with the relevant Health Care Professionals to generate the result so that the laboratory is not required to confirm or document consent.

Patient Feedback/Complaints/Compliments

St James’s Hospital and the laboratory welcomes all feedback from patients, family members, and other service users. The hospital is committed to listening, responding to, and learning from people’s experiences to improve the services the hospital provides.

• Send a compliment – this will be shared with the relevant service/personnel
• Leave a comment/feedback – this will not receive a formal response
• Make a formal complaint

You can give feedback in a number of ways using the contact details below.

By writing to the SJH Complaints Officer:

Address:

The Complaints Officer
The Patient Experience Office
Quality and Safety Improvement Directorate
St James’s Hospital
Dublin 8.

By emailing:
patientfeedback@stjames.ie 

By telephone:
01 410 3361
01 428 4248

Patient Experience Office

The primary source of information for users is the LabMed User Guide.

In addition to the general information for the departments listed above, the guide also includes a database of laboratory investigations, fully searchable by department or investigation name. This provides full details of specimen types and volumes, patient preparation, special handling requirements, turnaround times and biological reference intervals.

The health professionals involved in Laboratory Medicine and Molecular Pathology include the following:

• Consultant pathologists and non-consultant hospital doctors
• Laboratory scientists
• Phlebotomists
• Medical laboratory assistants
• Administration staff

GP information is available in the LabMed User Guide.  A key requirement for all GPs is that they order tests from the GP test catalogue electronically through Healthlink and receive results electronically, also through Healthlink.

As GPs may require to be contacted outside normal clinic hours, an out-of-hours emergency contact number is a mandatory requirement for all GPs using the laboratory’s services.

The Laboratory Medicine and Molecular Pathology Directorate provide a referral service to all public and private hospitals in the country. All services are underpinned by a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and all laboratories are encouraged to request electronically using a LIS2LIS link that is available to them.

Details of the laboratory’s scope of accreditation under ISO 15189 Registration No. 327MT is available on www.INAB.ie  The laboratory has been approved to operate a flexible scope of accreditation. The lists of tests currently approved under the laboratory's flexible scope process are available by contacting the Quality Manager.

The LabMed declaration regarding the use of in-house devices can be found at this link.