ABSTRACT
Whenever you request an important test for a patient you could write down a prospective reminder in your diary or a special calendar for follow-up. For example, if you expect a blood test report to be back in one week, make an entry in your diary for the following week stating ‘Look up blood results for Mr A Nother’, or something similar. When you sign reports, it is then easy to tick the entries in your diary accordingly. If a result is overdue according to your diary, at the end of the day, you could ask your receptionist to pull out the relevant case-notes for you to look at the next morning. You will then be able to check quickly whether a result has arrived and been acted upon, or whether it may need chasing up. This procedure may seem a little tedious, but in fact does not take very long at all, and will help you to keep an eye on those test results in which you are particularly interested.
