What is your office policy on communicating labs with the patient?

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

Went in with a family member who was taking a lot of nephro toxic meds for an infection and suddenly came up with a 6 to 7 out of 10 flank/back pain. Wanted to make sure it wasn't acute kidney injury or failure and needed labs done. He had them done early in the morning and I called at the end of the day to see if they had results. I was told it would take 24 hours before the results would get back. Being that it would put us into the weekend, we would have to wait until Monday before hearing back. Just wondering is this standard procedure for most doctors offices to make you wait at least a day before you can possibly hear back results?

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Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.

Some tests take up to a week to be resulted by the lab. You can look at test turn around online for labs like quest, arup, and lab corp.

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Some lab results take at least a day for processing before they can be interpreted.

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Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.

We often don't get lab results until the following day. If they did a C&S, that can take 2-3 days.

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Specializes in Ambulatory Care; L&D.

We cannot make the lab tests run any faster. For example, I have to tell people all the time that we can't grow out a culture in a 15 minutes.

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