We are joining in the celebration for National Pathology Week – although this is important every year, this year it is even more important to recognise the work being achieved.
As well as celebrating the work being achieved in heart health we want to acknowledge the work that is still being achieved throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid-19 response has highlighted the work being achieved in Pathology: the way colleagues have responded and adapted to changing environments and pressures.
At the beginning of this year none of us knew the impact Covid-19 would have on our lives. We have seen our health services react with such professionalism in challenging circumstances.
This week we will be raising awareness of the importance of Pathology. During these busy and challenging times it is even more important that laboratories have the right tools to monitor the quality of the Pathology services provided. At Weqas, we hope that we can play a small part in helping our colleagues in achieving this through the continued provision of our External Quality Assurance (EQA) services and sample donations.
How we have provided support for heart health
Over the Covid-19 pandemic we have continued to send samples to assess the clinical utility of methods, including BNP and NT-proBNP Programmes to assess the performance of laboratories to detect, diagnose and evaluate the severity of heart failure, Programmes for high sensitivity CRP (hsCRP) and homocysteine are widely used as a marker of risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and our Cardiac marker Programmes for assessing the clinical utility of Troponin methods for the diagnosis of Myocardial damage.
How we have reacted to Covid-19
During the start of the pandemic we received a very high volume of requests for Procalcitonin samples to help laboratories quickly establish and verify these new markers to identify serious bacterial infections.
We have supported the Pathology laboratories and Point of Care (POCT) Teams across the UK by providing samples for verification of new devices and establishing satellite laboratories at the field Hospitals. We were constantly amazed at how quickly new services were deployed and how Pathology laboratories and POCT teams responded to the challenges they faced. We are happy to support our colleagues in any way we can to facilitate this amazing work.
Thank you to everyone
Our management team would like to thank all colleagues in Weqas who have shown a fantastic response and embraced new and unfamiliar work practices. Due to our colleagues’ response, we have not compromised on any of our services and have continued to develop new programmes. They have gone above and beyond in very challenging times.
