Laboratory Sites and Contact Details
Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI)
The laboratory is located in the MacEwen Building on Alexandra Parade (adjacent to A and E). It provides routine service Monday to Friday between 9.00am and 5.00pm and on Saturday between 9.00am and 12.00pm. An emergency service operates at all times.
Gartnavel General Hospital (GGH)
The main laboratory is at GGH (in the Laboratory Block of the GGH Complex). This laboratory provides routine and emergency services Monday to Friday between 9.00am and 5.00pm. Between 5.00pm and 7.30pm samples can be sent via the pneumatic tube system, these will be diverted to the porter’s room and sent regularly to GRI for analysis. This service stops at 7.30pm, all samples collected after this time should be sent via taxi to the laboratories at GRI. This taxi should be organised locally at ward level. Any samples sent in the pneumatic tube system after 7.30pm may remain un-analysed until the next day.
New Stobhill Hospital
A small satellite laboratory is located on Level 1 and operates Monday to Friday between 9.00am and 5.00pm.
Enquiries (9.00am until 5.00pm)
There is a central reporting office located at GRI which covers the three North Glasgow laboratory sites.
Duty Biochemist/General Enquiries 0141 242 9500 (x.29500)
Enquiries (Out of Hours)
Contact the on-call biochemist via switchboard 0141 211 4000
Emergency Laboratories (24/7)
Glasgow Royal Infirmary call 0141 211 4487 (x.24487)
Accreditation and Quality
North Glasgow Biochemistry is a medical testing laboratory accredited to ISO 15189:2022 by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). Our UKAS Medical Accreditation number is 9572. A full list of accredited tests can be found on our schedule of accreditation. Tests not on this list are not accredited; please contact the laboratory for further information if required.
The laboratory participates in external quality assurance schemes where available. Performance details are available upon request. If you wish to provide feedback on the North Glasgow Biochemistry service, please contact our Quality Manager.
The Biochemistry department utilises the Telepath Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and TrakCare. Due to the limitations of this software, we are currently unable to fully meet the requirements of the UKAS publication GEN-6 – Reference to accreditation and multilateral recognition signatory status.
This publication sets out the requirements of reports/results released by the laboratory to contain the appropriate use of UKAS logos and identify any tests that are accredited and those that are not. The department have risk assessed this. Due to the number of analytes that can be listed on a Biochemistry report, the number of tests that are UKAS accredited and the number of auto comments already added, it is agreed by the laboratory management team that an additional auto comment would detract from the clinically relevant comments and potentially could push these onto a second page where they may be missed altogether. The risk is magnified by the way TrakCare displays results, as any result with a comment has an icon displayed next to it. If an icon is displayed next to almost every result, the alert loses its impact and may lead to clinicians missing critical icons and comments.
Although we are not able to present this information on our reports, the department’s user’s handbook and website provide full details of our accreditation.
Laboratory Handbooks
Forms
During periods of Trakcare downtime, Biochemistry requests must be made on paper request forms. Request forms can be ordered through PECOS, however a pdf copy of the North Glasgow Biochemistry form is available for download and printing.
