We run various Q&A services and a popular theme for questions relates to lab tests. Questions include ‘When should we do one?’, ‘When should we re-test?’ etc.

Around two year ago the Journal of Clinical Pathology ran a series of papers ‘Best practice in primary care pathology’ which proved very useful for our Q&A activities. Now, these papers have been released, free access, on the web – BetterTesting. To make it even more useful the papers have been ‘cut up’ into nearly 120 clinical Q&As. An example Q is:

Why is this resource so important? The disclaimer says:

“Clinical guidance is more difficult to formulate for laboratory medicine as the evidence base is frequently weaker than for medical interventions. The guidance contained in this site must therefore be used in the clinical context and cannot be taken in isolation, as either a minimum or acceptable standard.”

Basically, there is little evidence out there. This collection is a (sort of) current state of our knowledge style resource and is very welcome.