You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 72, Issue 3
  • Opinion: redefining the role of the physician in laboratory medicine in the context of emerging technologies, personalised medicine and patient autonomy (‘4P medicine’)

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Thematic management
Opinion: redefining the role of the physician in laboratory medicine in the context of emerging technologies, personalised medicine and patient autonomy (‘4P medicine’)
  1. Matthias Orth1,2,
  2. Maria Averina3,
  3. Stylianos Chatzipanagiotou4,
  4. Gilbert Faure5,
  5. Alexander Haushofer6,
  6. Vesna Kusec7,
  7. Augusto Machado8,
  8. Siraj A Misbah9,
  9. Wytze Oosterhuis10,
  10. Kari Pulkki11,
  11. Patrick J Twomey12,13,
  12. Eberhard Wieland14
  1. 1 Vinzenz von Paul Kliniken gGmbH, Institut für Laboratoriumsmedizin, Stuttgart, Germany
  2. 2 Medizinische Fakultät Mannheim, Ruprecht Karls Universität, Mannheim, Germany
  3. 3 Diagnostisk klinikk, Laboratoriemedisin, Universitessykehuset Nord-Norge HF, Tromsø, Norway
  4. 4 Department of Clinical Microbiology and Medical Biopathology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School - Aeginition Hospital, Athens, Greece
  5. 5 Laboratoire d’Immunologie, Pole Laboratoires, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nancy, Nancy, Lorraine, France
  6. 6 Klinikum Wels - Grieskirchen GmbH, Institut für Medizinische und Chemische Labordiagnostik mit Blutbank, Wels, Austria
  7. 7 Klinicki Zavod za Laboratorijsku Dijagnostiku, Klinicki Bolnicki Centar Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
  8. 8 Department of Botelho Moniz Análises Clínicas, SA, Porto, Portugal
  9. 9 Department of Clinical Immunology, Oxford University Hospitals, Oxford, UK
  10. 10 Department of Clinical Chemistry and Haematology, Atrium Medical Center, PC Heerlen, Netherlands
  11. 11 Department of Clinical Chemistry, Eastern Finland Laboratory Centre and University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
  12. 12 Department of Clinical Chemistry, St. Vincent’s University Hospital/St Vincent’s Group Healthcare Group, Dublin, Ireland
  13. 13 School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
  14. 14 Klinikum Stuttgart, Zentrum für Diagnostik, Zentralinstitut für Klinische Chemie und Laboratoriumsmedizin, Stuttgart, Germany
  1. Correspondence to Dr Matthias Orth, Vinzenz von Paul Kliniken gGmbH, Institut für Laboratoriumsmedizin, Postfach 103163, 70027 Stuttgart, Germany; matthias.orth{at}vinzenz.de

Abstract

The role of clinical pathologists or laboratory-based physicians is being challenged on several fronts—exponential advances in technology, increasing patient autonomy exercised in the right to directly request tests and the use of non-medical specialists as substitutes. In response, clinical pathologists have focused their energies on the pre-analytical and postanalytical phases of Laboratory Medicine thus emphasising their essential role in individualised medical interpretation of complex laboratory results. Across the European Union, the role of medical doctors is enshrined in the Medical Act. This paper highlights the relevance of this act to patient welfare and the need to strengthen training programmes to prevent an erosion in the quality of Laboratory Medicine provided to patients and their physicians.

  • medical education
  • chemical pathology
  • laboratory management

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/jclinpath-2017-204734

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Tahir S Pillay.

    • Contributors MO drafted the paper. MA and VK developed the vignettes. All authors (MO, MA, SC, GF, AH, VA, AM, SAM, WO,KP, PT and EW) revised the draft paper. MO is guarantor of this paper.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.