Our Histopathology Team has been recognised as number three in the top 20 performing trusts for their national 7-Day Turnaround Time (TAT) in March – a brilliant achievement, as they’re also one of the busiest teams in in the region.

Histopathology is an important part of the patient pathway and intrinsic to many patients’ care and treatment, particularly for cancer patients.

Our team of pathologists and biomedical scientists have put some excellent working practices in place to help us sustain turnaround times, including:

• Proactively dealing with specimens so they are assigned to pathologists as soon as possible for reporting
• Triaging all samples to ensure urgent cases are reported in a timely manner
• Close working relationship between biomedical scientists and pathologists. This supports a quick TAT in the laboratory, extra work is completed ASAP and urgent cases are prioritised
• Team working between pathologists on second opinions and getting cases ready in time for Multi-Disciplinary Teams

Pathology General Manager, Sarah Ramsden, said: “As a patient-focused team, they have often demonstrated One Culture of Care, including working over and above their working hours. Pathologists have done their SPA in their own time, so they can focus on the job in-hand. So, we’re looking at how we can move forward to relieve pressure on the team.”

Clinical Director for Pathology, Dr Anu Rajgopal added: “Well done histopathology team! That’s such a great achievement and illustrates your patient-centred values, even more so when regional benchmarking has shown that the workload at CHFT is substantially higher than that of other trusts in the region.”

More information

*Histopathology is the diagnosis of diseases by examining tissues  under a microscope. Histopathologists are specialised doctors responsible for making tissue diagnoses and helping clinicians manage a patient’s care.

NHS Trusts are measured against the national NHS Pathology Quality Assurance Dashboard.