Grant: Project Grant

Blood tests are valuable tools used by clinicians to help diagnose and treat their patients. However, overuse of these tests, particularly in hospitalized patients leads to patient discomfort, disruption in sleep patterns, and can negatively impact their medical outcomes. Patients can become anemic to the point of requiring blood transfusions and longer hospital stays. Hence it is important for clinicians and patients to engage in meaningful conversations about why and how often blood tests are drawn. Our team has previously convened a national group of experts to develop recommendations on the use of blood tests for hospitalized patients. By educating healthcare teams around these recommendations, and providing them summarized feedback on their ordering patterns, we have shown that we can safely reduce test overuse. We are currently working with our patient partners to co-build tools and develop strategies to effectively engage patients with optimal use of laboratory tests. We now propose a study to: (i) Engage healthcare providers and patients in optimizing the use of blood testing in hospitalized medical patients in 30 hospitals in Canada (ii) Describe the experience of patients and healthcare providers with these efforts to optimize blood testing in hospitalized patients The lessons we learn from this study will be important in further spread of our efforts to optimize the use of blood tests. This study will help understand how to best integrate tools to optimize blood testing into healthcare system operational processes. Our eventual goal is to develop a national strategy for integration of such tools so that blood testing in hospitals becomes more purposeful.