Communicating with clinicians

The main purpose of clinical biochemistry and other service departments is to provide more information to a clinician about a patient’s condition than the clinician can derive from his or her own clinical skills. The accuracy and precision of many laboratory investigations are now so good that the limiting factor determining the value of the clinical biochemistry department is the ability to present a range of information at the correct time and place and through an appropriate medium. The wide range of media available provides both an opportunity and a risk, as great inef®ciencies can be introduced in the laboratory and in clinical practice by the choice of the wrong medium for a particular task. Nearly all service laboratories need to communicate with clinicians, but there is a pronounced asymmetry here as, for example, often in the UK 30% of a laboratory’s work is related to general practice, whereas work related to laboratory investigations takes less than 5% of a general practitioner’s (GP’s) time. This paper discusses only communications involving laboratories, but clinicians will also be communicating with many other individuals and organizations.Optimal ef®ciency in communication will only be achieved if all of these are coordinated effectively.