Ailsa Ralph, NHS Trainee Clinical Scientist
With the onset of COVID one of the big challenges faced by many hospitals was having sufficient access to biosafety cabinets for sample handling, due to the unknown infection risk from viral RNA which could be detected in the samples. Many hospitals had to prioritise which samples/tests would be performed. In the absence of spare capacity in the safety cabinets, the only way Lanarkshire could maintain their calprotectin service was to give the CALEX sample extraction device to the patients to prepare directly, rather than sending in a portion of the stool in a pot (universal tubes) for processing by the laboratory staff.
Giving CALEX to patients was implemented in 2020, and seemed to work well so Lanarkshire has continued with providing CALEX for submission of samples for faecal calprotectin testing.
95% Compliance
The compliance rate for the CALEX has been high at 95%. Dr Ailsa Ralph has subsequently distributed two surveys amongst patients and front-line clinical staff to gain an insight into the user experience and see if there was anything that could be improved upon, and she talks here about their findings.
