RE: Calm Down People30 Aug 2024 18:33
Health care is one of the most important services that need to be provided to any community. Many challenges exist in delivering proper and effective health services, including ensuring timely delivery, providing adequate care through effective management and achieving good outcomes. Point-of-care testing (POCT) plays a crucial role in delivering urgent and appropriate health services, especially in peripheral communities, emergency situations, disaster areas and overcrowded areas. We collected and reviewed secondary data about point-of-care testing from PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar. Our findings emphasize that POCT provides fast care with minimal waiting time, avoids unnecessary investigations, aids in triage, and provides decision-makers with a clear understanding of the patient’s condition to make informed decisions. We recommend point-of-care testing as a frontline investigation in emergency departments, intensive care units, peripheral hospitals, primary health care centers, disaster areas and field hospitals. Point-of-care testing can improve the quality of health services and ensure the provision of necessary health care.
Keywords: patient triage, early deposition, early management, early diagnosis, overcrowded, waiting time, short stay, turnaround time (tat), point of care testing
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Introduction and background
Point-of-care (POC) testing (POCT) refers to simple or non-invasive diagnostic tests that are conducted near the patients, eliminating the need to send samples to a central lab or tertiary hospital for analysis. The point-of-care procedure is characterized by a swift turnaround time, often yielding results within a few minutes. Any simple and non-invasive diagnostic test or procedure that is administered near the patient can be classified as point-of-care [1,2].
POCT can be used in emergency departments (EDs), intensive care units (ICUs), acute care services, primary health care, pre-hospital settings, rural hospitals, mobile medical