Elderly FIL and blood test

The computer dispenses the required labels.
I know that the bottles and forms need to be labelled correctly.
I was a nurse myself.

All the bloods, swabs and urine samples etc. are collected daily and taken to the hospital 60 miles away to be processed.

How do they label the bottles then? The bottles are labelled, put in a little bag with a corresponding paper label attached. You may not see it but they are.

Same as swabs, samples etc

It's not a waste - the bottles have barcodes attached to them once blood is taken which are part of the form - it labels them has his

We're in a small village in Scotland.
If our GPs request blood tests, we make an appointment with the nurse at the surgery, and when we attend, the nurse looks at our online notes and knows what tests the doctor wants done.

I haven't seen a paper request for bloods since we moved here.

FIL was issued it but he forgot it - not the nurses fault - it's his fault.

Each trust/UHB has their own budget plus nations are devolved. WHO would pay for it?

Not all of it no.

I took a friend to hospital in Norwich - we had to take paper copies and emailed scans for her follow up back at home.

Different trusts/health boards use different computer systems

You're at your practice having bloods your practice have requested. This bloke was at another centre.

Many practice nurses now don't take bloods - phlebotomists do

Why can't the GP just take the blood. Takes 2 mins and is hardly rocket science. That's the really bonkers thing. Having a whole separate department with a second set of support staff, not to mention the delays and inconvenience to the patient, seems insane

Well no - the FIL wasted peoples time, nhs time and his own time by forgetting the form. The whole reason he was given the form was to take it with him.

The reason bloods are taken at hospital/a centre is because samples are only often collected daily from a surgery - usually early afternoon. Very rare a GP will take bloods - they are very busy. Either a phlebotomist visits certain times a week or possibly a nurse or hca could take them but remember they are probably already running their own clinics.

Also phlebs are incredibly skills - taking blood is an art particularly on elderly/frail so they'll more like get a succesful draw

Does it get written on parchment and couriered there by elves on winged horses?

Here ( Sheffield) we just turn up to the phlebotomy appointment and take a ticket to join the queue. The hospital already have a record of what tests are required on line based on the gps request. We don't have physical forms.

They won't
I was crying once because I felt so unwell and forgot my blood form and it was beyond me to go home, get it and come back
No form, no bloods

I also got told off for not mentioning I needed two lots of bloods doing last time I went

I have health ID on my phone too which lists my meds, medical conditions, living will and says my pet is home alone please contact X

Where I live the form is uploaded from the GP or the Consultant to the phlebotomy clinics' computer. You make an appointment at any of the local phlebotomy clinics. There are about half a dozen.

In an ideal world, he should have taken his form. However, also in an ideal world, the administrator should and could have called the GP and got them to ping through a copy of the form. I think assistance and adjustments shoukd be afforded people in their 80s. They fact they aren't illustrates everything that is wrong with the National Health SERVICE. The clue is in the third word.

This thread completely sums up why the NHS is in such a mess.

Standard. I have bloods done in my local area and my consultant is at a different hospital and they can never access them
So I'm not quite sure why I actually get them done every 12 weeks but anyway...

We don't have paper forms where I live, in the UK

Of course it’s standard procedure. The dr prints off a form and you take it with you. It’s never been any different

The gp/nurse would know when s/he received blood test results s/he hadn’t ordered and be pretty furious you had defaced the document in their name and NMC/GMC number? You’d look like a Wally and waste a lot of time and money? Blood tests costs £100’s!

@ExitViaGiftShop I thought you could opt-in to sharing your medical records. I did. However, the last few blood tests I’ve had, the Dr has given me a form to take. That said, once they said they would have the form produced at the place I was having my test at but then failed to do so. So then I got there and they manually wrote it out.

Seems a bit lame to me because the previous time they gave me a form and if I wanted, I could have just ticked all the boxes if I wanted to and who’d know?

It will be the clinician who is looking after you’s job to contact your GP or health provider to establish baseline information. And they will probably waste a lot of time doing it, the manifold black holes in the NHS system are maddening at times.
And it’s a shame your fil wasted his own and also other people’s time turning up for a blood taking appointment without the form he was given, but this is also the form that identifies the bloods and accompanies them to the labs. What did he think they gave him a form for?

Creating a centralized database of number of databases is very costly and time consuming. Imagine trying to separate the spaghetti in a factory full of tangled up cooked spaghetti. As PP said having enough doctors, beds and being able to provide basic healthcare is a lot more urgent and necessary.