So Exactly Who Is Doing Your COVID PCR Testing?

Have you ever wondered who the medical experts are that oversee all aspects of your COVID PCR tests in the diagnostic laboratories in Aotearoa New Zealand?

These highly qualified registered health professionals are medical laboratory scientists (MLS). To become a MLS involves four years of intensive university medical education coupled with a 6–12-month practical internship depending on the laboratory discipline that is chosen to specialise in. Many of our scientists continue onto further study gaining a Postgraduate diploma (PG Dip), or a Masters of Medical Laboratory Science (MMLSc) and a few standouts go on to complete a PhD in Medical Laboratory Science. This ensures that the public of Aotearoa New Zealand can have total confidence that their precious testing samples are being analysed with the safeguard of a regulatory environment with accountability and expertise that gives confidence and certainty about the validity of any test result that these health professionals release.

‘It is totally at odds with both this training requirement and the strict regulatory environment that our diagnostic laboratory facilities operate under to see that COVID PCR extraction and testing can now be performed in an unregulated environment within a Port board office in the Hawkes Bay’ says Terry Taylor the President of the New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science.

‘Does that mean that a non-medical trained member of the public can now do a medical procedure or intervention on someone else with no accountability or regulated responsibility?’ says Terry Taylor.

‘It would be an expectation at the very least that any COVID PCR surveillance testing scenario would involve the onsite oversight of a registered medical laboratory scientist with an Annual Practising Certificate and the appropriate facility accreditation standards from IANZ’ says Taylor.

All the other public and commercial diagnostic laboratory providers in Aotearoa New Zealand are required to abide by the appropriate regulations to ensure they are compliant with the various health acts and staffing registrations.

So, the question remains why do some commercial business entities think they don’t have to follow the same strict guidelines?

‘I am in no way an expert in dealing in the logistics around a Port business and would never think that I was and step into that role without the appropriate qualifications and regulations behind me and I would expect that same business to enforce that.’

‘Yet here is a classic example of ignoring exactly that within a business setting with a specialised and highly regulated medical professional activity’ says Terry Taylor.

‘Basic things that we as medical laboratory scientists are experts at like monitoring consumable storage conditions, internal and external quality control, participation in regulated quality assurance programmes, audit assessments and appropriate professional development are part of our every-day role. Plus, we have the ingrained clinical pathway routes to follow when things don’t go to plan. I would implore the business leaders throughout the motu to work with, and not against the expert medical laboratory testing opinion and advice of this group of clearly undervalued registered health professionals. To have unregulated testing without falling under wider regional management only adds to the fragmentation of the COVID testing and surveillance response.’

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