laboratory test results. Image source: WSJ
Angela Onwuzoo
Experts say laboratory test results of patients sent for medical evaluation should be interpreted by the physicians who requested for them to be carried out and not by laboratory scientists.
According to them, it is the duty of doctors, not laboratory scientists to interpret laboratory test results for patients.
The medical experts said the results of laboratory tests should be sealed and sent to a patient’s doctor, who will now interpret and explain details of the results based on observation and findings.
One of the experts, who is the President of the Nigerian Medical Association, Dr Uche Ojinmah, told PUNCH Healthwise that the result of a laboratory test is confidential until a doctor discusses it with a patient.
NMA President, Dr Uche Ojinmah
He said the doctor needs to put together the history of the patient and clinical findings and analyze the two to arrive at what is wrong with the patient.
The NMA boss clarified that the interpretation of test results for a patient is strictly the duty of a doctor, adding, “You can see your result and collapse because you don’t understand what is there. You can look at a result and think it is bad based on a layman’s idea. In the classical sense, results are sent to the doctor.
“Remember that it was the doctor who examined the patient and sent him to run some tests to confirm what he suspects. So, if you go to a lab scientist to interpret the result, he does not have your history.
“So, it is a sensitive matter in medical jurisprudence. Results are very sensitive. It is always better for the doctor and the patient to discuss the result before any other person can see it.”
He further noted,“ In fact, in many established laboratories, when you carry out a test, they send the result to your email. It is now the doctor who will sit with the patient and explain the result.
“After that, the patient can see the result and is not allowed to take the result because it will be in the folder as a record.
“But if you need a copy for any reason, it can be given to you once it is the patient who owns the result he is asking for.”
According to him, going to a laboratory centre to collect a result and opening it, can cause a problem and make someone else see what he is not meant to see.
The NMA president maintained that a laboratory test result is a confidential document that should be discussed between the doctor and the patient.
However, a past President, of the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria, Dr. Toyosi Raheem, told our correspondent that everyone who paid for a service has the right to detailed information about such service.
Raheem noted that even the National Health Act 2014 supports a patient having the right to detailed information about the services paid for.
He explained, “Apart from laboratory services, even clinical services where drugs are prescribed for patients by the clinician, you have the right to ask the clinician the names of those drugs.
“The same thing with laboratory services, as long as you are the one that paid for the service, you have the right to have the necessary information about what you paid for. That is the first leg of my response.
“The second response is that if you are referred by a clinician to a laboratory, even though the lab has the right to tell you the result of your test based on its professional competence, you still have the right to go back to that clinician with the result.
“With the result, the clinician or doctor will examine you properly and compare the result with the clinical findings.
“So, it is not to say that after knowing the details about the result, the patient will go away and buy drugs. That is why the clinician usually says ‘bring the result back to me’.”
Studies have shown that laboratory services play an integral role in the healthcare system – from primary- through to tertiary-level care – since diagnostic tests can either confirm or exclude a tentative diagnosis, or screen for potential diseases.
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