Speakers
Catherine Dibden
Plenary
Saving precious pandemic ED waiting time with a new Chest Pain Pathway - Catherine Dibden
The COVID-19 pandemic placed additional space and resource constraints on many areas of NHS hospital care across the UK, not least the emergency departments (ED). In May 2020 a new chest pain pathway was implemented at Barnsley Hospital, aiming to reduce the length of patient stay in ED and reduce hospital admissions. The new pathway uses a higher initial hs-cTnI (Siemens Advia/Atellica TNIH) cut-off for NSTEMI rule-out than almost all previously published pathways employ.
A clinical audit of outcomes for patients who had NSTEMI excluded by the chest pain pathway in use and a single hs-cTnI result, 1 year pre- and post-implementation, gave reassurance that the new pathway had enabled many more patients to be discharged home after a single troponin result, whilst preserving comparable outcomes to the old pathway. Discharging additional patients after their initial blood result eased pressures on the ED, the Acute Medical Unit, and Cardiology at Barnsley Hospital, with an estimated annual saving of over 800 hours of patient stay in the ED.
This talk will discuss the new pathway that was implemented, and the reasons why this particular hs-cTnI method may be well suited to an increased rule-out cut-off in the evaluation of cardiac chest pain.
Chair: Kath Hayden
Cat is a Consultant Clinical Scientist in Biochemistry at Barnsley and Rotherham Laboratories, part of the newly established South Yorkshire & Bassetlaw Pathology Partnership. She provides clinical leadership for the Point of Care Testing Service at The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, and is a clinical subject matter expert in biochemistry for the SYB LIMS Programme. Cat trained at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, and spent 9 years in Newborn Screening at Sheffield Children’s Hospital before returning to general biochemistry to take up her consultant post in 2019. Her interests include paediatrics, quality improvement, POCT and the use of IT to optimise service provision.
Kath Hayden is a Consultant Clinical Biochemist at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester.
Following training in South Manchester, Kath has held posts in hospitals in Manchester and Liverpool over a 35 year period, overseeing significant advances in analytical technologies, point of care testing (POCT) and harmonisation of laboratories. With specialist interests in endocrinology, POCT, leadership and service improvement, her latest roles have been as Clinical Head of Division for Laboratory Medicine at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Trust Lead Healthcare Scientist, Clinical Director for Laboratory Medicine and Head of Service for Clinical Biochemistry at Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.