Our paper explores results of the acceptability and implementation issues of point of care tests (POCTs) in paediatric patients in three south London hospitals. Overall, we found that having a test result was thought to improve bed management and cohorting sick patients appropriately, reassure parents about their child’s condition, reduce hospital transmission, and rationalise further tests and treatment. Concerns focused on confidence about the test’s performance – particularly around false negatives not receiving proper management, how to manage discrepant results (i.e. the laboratory assay gave a different answer to the POCT), and training enough staff to run the test at the point of care.
Bustinduy AL, Jeyaratnam D, Adams EJ, et al. CLAHRC South London; Paediatric Infection Network. Point-of-care tests for infectious diseases: Barriers to implementation across three London teaching hospitals. Acta Paediatrica, April 2017. DOI: 10.1111/apa.13867