The department of Pathology adheres to the principles of patient-focused laboratory medicine, adopting a proactive stance on optimising the delivery of medical laboratory services to give maximum efficiency and effectiveness to health care.

• Read our quality policy
• Policy on Protection of Personal Informaton
• Policy on Self Requesting and result delivery to patients

The Pathology laboratory is assessed by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) which is the sole accreditation body recognised by government to assess,against internationally agreed standards (ISO 15189:2012).  All our laboratories have been assessed  to ISO 15189:2012 standards.

Accreditation ensures that the laboratory provides a high quality service to defined standards.

Biochemistry

• Accredited to ISO 15189:2012 ref 8342

Haematology & blood transfusion

• Accredited to ISO 15189:2012 ref 8342
• MHRA compliance (Blood Transfusion)

 Cellular Pathology

• Accredited to ISO 15189:2012 ref 8062
• HTA licence (mortuaries and laboratory)

Microbiology 

• Accredited to ISO 15189:2012 ref 8063

All departments take part in the National External Quality Assessment schemes.  Samples are sent from a reference laboratory for examination, we perform the tests and return the results.  Our performance is compared nationally with other laboratories in the scheme and also with previous works carried out by us.  This gives confidence that our results do not vary over time and are similar to those obtained from other laboratories.

Labtests Online – a public service that explains Pathology tests for patients

The National Blood Service website – if you wish to donate blood