Longtown Medical Centre - About medical tests and how to get your results

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Our next Patient Participation Group meeting will be held at the surgery on Wednesday 24th May at 2pm. Any patient of the Practice is welcome to come along.
For any non-urgent medical, admin or prescription queries, you can contact us online by clicking HERE You can also use the link to order your repeat prescriptions and fit notes.
If you have borrowed a blood pressure monitor from the surgery and still have it, please could you return it ASAP. We are running out of the monitors and will be unable to continue with this important home-reading service for our patients if we do not get them back.

Test Results

Most blood and urine results are now sent to the practice from the hospital by computer links rather than by post. Most will be back within 48 hours. X-ray results and hospital letters are sent by the internal mail and take a variable time to arrive.

All results and letters have to be seen and checked by a doctor before being filed or passed on. For your test results please telephone the surgery after 15.00 on 01228 791328. Sometimes, we cannot always give full results over the phone. If the result is complicated, or if the doctor wants to see you about the result, we will offer you an appointment.

Please note that we do have a strict policy regarding confidentiality and data protection. In this respect we will only give out results to the person they relate to unless that person has given prior permission for their release or if they are not capable of understanding them.

Having a urine test

Sample bottles are available for patients to collect at the reception at our surgery.
Please bring your urine specimen in before 11am on the day it is done. Please make sure specimens are labelled with the date and your name and date of birth. You may have been given a small form to hand in as well – please hand this in, writing the date and time of the specimen in the top right hand corner first.

The doctor or nurse will have told you if the sample is for dip testing at the practice. This is usually done as a screen for sugar or infection. Please tell the receptionist this information.
The clinician asking for the test may well have said that it is to check for an infection, if this is the case then please make sure the sample is taken from the mid-stream, is passed the same morning it is brought in, and you use a sterile, white-capped bottle obtainable from the reception counter.

Please note that the laboratory do not do routine pregnancy testing. Fast reliable tests can be purchased at the chemist.

Blood Tests

blood_tests_4 A blood test is when a sample of blood is taken for testing in a laboratory. Blood tests have a wide range of uses and are one of the most common types of medical test. For example, a blood test can be used to:

assess your general state of health
confirm the presence of a bacterial or viral infection
see how well certain organs, such as the liver and kidneys, are functioning

A blood test usually involves the phlebotomist taking a blood sample from a blood vessel in your arm. and the usual place for a sample is the inside of the elbow or wrist, where the veins are relatively close to the surface. Blood samples from children are most commonly taken from the back of the hand. The child's hand will be anaesthetised (numbed) with a special cream before the sample is taken.

You can find out more about blood tests, their purpose and the way they are performed on the NHS Choices website.

X-Ray

doctor examining an x-ray An X-ray is a widely used diagnostic test to examine the inside of the body. X-rays are a very effective way of detecting problems with bones, such as fractures. They can also often identify problems with soft tissue, such as pneumonia or breast cancer.

If you have a X-ray, you will be asked to lie on a table or stand against a surface so that the part of your body being X-rayed is between the X-ray tube and the photographic plate.

An X-ray is usually carried out by a radiographer, a healthcare professional who specialises in using imaging technology, such as X-rays and ultrasound scanners.

You can find out more about x-ray tests, how they are performed, their function and the risks by visiting the NHS Choices website.

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Test Results

Having a urine test

Blood Tests

X-Ray

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