Point of Care Testing essay
In actuality, point-of-care testing opens larger opportunities for the consistent improvement of the quality of health care services and their effectiveness. However, point-of-care technologies and testing are not widely-spread today and patients still have to wait for results of their testing. More important, health care professionals also have to waste their time and the time of patients, until they obtain results of conventional testing. In this regard, the implementation of point-of-care testing is much more effective compared to conventional testing because this testing allows saving time substantially. Today, the time spent by health care professionals on pregnancy test is unreasonably long. Often the pregnancy test in the hospital setting takes 30-40 minutes, while the contemporary technology allows completing the pregnancy test in 5 minutes.
The implementation of point-of-care testing can help to save time and to obtain reliable and accurate results fast, which is particularly important in regard to pregnancy and pregnancy tests. Such testing is very important because, if pregnant women have health problems, while their pregnancy is uncertain, they have to pass the pregnancy test. In actuality, they have to pass the conventional testing in the hospital setting that takes about 30-40 minutes to obtain the result of such test. However, in urgent situations, when women have serious health problems and fast intervention is crucial, health care professionals and their patients cannot waste their time and wait for half an hour or even more.
However, in face of current problems with pregnancy testing which takes up to 40 minutes in the hospital setting, it is possible to develop adequate interference recommendations should be developed. The following strengths of recommendation rating should be applied to practical recommendations on the prevention of falls among the elderly population:
Based on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force rating system (Harris et al, 2001).
Today, the introduction of point-of-care testing in relation to pregnancy tests faces several challenges. First, the lack of the equipment that can provide health care professionals and patients to conduct pregnancy testing just at the bed of patients and to obtain results of testing in the matter of 5 minutes. Point-of-care pregnancy testing could be extremely efficient in terms of time saving. The results may be obtained fast and health care professionals can take the right decision concerning the intervention in any specific case of pregnancy.
Another problem is the poor management since health care organizations fail to implement new technologies, including point-of-care testing for pregnancy. Instead, they keep using traditional pregnancy tests which are time consuming and, therefore, ineffective, especially, when the information on pregnancy is needed urgently. In fact, the contemporary structure of health care organization and system of testing are quite rigid and highly resistant to technological changes, although the main problem of point-of-care pregnancy testing is a short time, which raises doubts in some health care professionals (Kost, 2002).
In fact, prejudices and skeptical attitude of some health care professionals to point-of-care testing of pregnancy is another obstacle on the way of its wide implementation. Some health care professionals believe that point-of-care testing is less accurate than conventional testing and, therefore, cannot be applied in the hospital setting because of the risk of error, which though is very low. Prejudices persist, in spite of numerous tests and studies that have proved the reliability and accuracy of point-of-care pregnancy testing (Kost, 2006). Thus, studies (Harris et al., 2001) prove the effectiveness of point-of-care pregnancy testing. Therefore, point-of-care pregnancy testing is reliable and provide health care professionals with adequate results concerning the pregnancy of patients.
The implementation of point-of-care pregnancy testing needs technological changes since the purchase of the new equipment and the replacement of the old one are necessary. The introduction of new technology involves the introduction of new equipment in hospitals to conduct testing just at the bed of patients.
In this regard, the problem of funding arises since the introduction of the new equipment and replacement of the old one may be costly. The purchase of new equipment implies the problem of raising funds to purchase this equipment. Another problem is the old equipment, which turns out to be unnecessary, although many health care organizations have already spent considerable funds on that equipment.
However, benefits of point-of-care pregnancy testing outweigh its costs since the fast result of pregnancy testing allows health care professionals to take decisions faster, while in case of pregnancy the speed of decision making process is often the matter of life and death. Obviously, point-of-care pregnancy tests are comfortable for patients and they take just five minutes. Hence, health care professionals will be able to increase their productivity as they will be able to conduct the pregnancy tests six times as much as they normally do now. Today, pregnancy tests take 30 minutes at the least, if the point-of-care pregnancy testing is implemented, health care professionals will be able to conduct at least six tests, which need just 5 minutes each, instead of one.
The implementation of point-of-care pregnancy testing should be supported by public organizations, while the government should consider the possibility of fiscal measures that could stimulate the introduction of point-of-care pregnancy testing. The implementation of point-of-care pregnancy testing will not need any substantial training of health care professionals because the main advantage of such testing is its simplicity and effectiveness. Such testing is user-friendly and health care professionals will not need to spend much time on training. Instead, they will need to know only basics of point-of-care pregnancy testing.
Thus, today, the conventional pregnancy testing is reliable but ineffective because it is time consuming. In the hospital setting, the waste of time is unacceptable. Therefore, the introduction of point-of-care pregnancy testing could improve the effectiveness of health care professionals’ performance and save their time substantially. Instead of 30-40 minutes needed for a conventional pregnancy test, health care professionals could spend just five minutes to complete the point-of-care pregnancy test at the bed of a patient. Hence, point-of-care pregnancy testing is worth implementing, even though the new pregnancy testing may be costly. The increase of productivity and efficiency of the new testing can compensate its costs.
