An analysis of clinical consultation activities in clinical pathology: who requests help and why.

Abstract

To examine the distribution of callers who made consultation requests and to identify associations between caller categories and consultation topics. Review of prospectively collected database of consultations. Direct care personnel made more consultation requests than non-direct care personnel. Consultation topics varied by caller type. Direct care personnel requested more consultations on test interpretation and few consultations on test selection than laboratory personnel. Differences in consultation requests by primary care physicians and specialists were significant. At our laboratory, consultation requests primarily originate from primary care physicians. Consultation requests vary by caller type.