PRACTICAL INTERPRETATION
OF LABORATORY TESTS
which is accredited by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.
This workshop will give nurses a solid review of many basic laboratory tests encountered in practice today. With an emphasis on understanding and using the lab test, rather than memorizing lists of values, learning will be facilitated by disucssions of underlying physiology, case histories, and criteria for application to patient monitoring and diagnosis.
Topics which will be covered include:
Life cycle of the RBCs, anemias - indices, iron studies, diagnosis.
Infections and the WBC, the differential, left shifts.
Arterial Blood Gases 101 - a beginner lecture on ABGs will take the learner step-by-step through the interpretation process to determine acid/base balance.
A,B,C,ALT-SGPT, etc: The Alphabet Soup of Liver Testing
Normal liver and biliary tract, hepatitis viral studies (antigen/antibodies), liver enzymes, bilirubin.
Indications, specificity/sensitivity, quantitative vs. qualitative, specimen collection - common pitfalls of drawing blood.
Urinalysis
Methods, specimen collection, significance of findings, Bence Jones Protein, 24 hr. creatinine clearance.
Testing for Diabetes Mellitus/laboratory Monitoring in DKA
Blood sugars, glycosylated hemoglobin, glucose tolerance tests, diagnostic criteria for Diabetes Mellitus.
Coagulation Studies
PT/INR, PTT, aPTT
