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North Devon Pathology Service is part of the Northern Devon Healthcare Trust and based at the North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple.
The pages within this Pathology website are designed for health professionals who use our service. It is not intended to provide information for the general public.
To navigate the site, use the menu on the right hand side.
What does a Laboratory Pathology Service Do?
We provide the ‘engine room’ of modern medicine with 70% of diagnoses based on the Pathology results provided by laboratory services. With an estimated 150 million samples being analysed by Pathology staff in the UK, every person at some point in their lives will have benefited from Pathology Services.
The Pathology Service is at the heart of the medical team providing other professionals with vital scientific information that allows them to do their job properly. When a major incident occurs it is Pathology staff that ensure the right amount of blood reaches the right patient at the right time. We measure vital blood chemicals to monitor patient conditions and detect signs of internal bleeding. Accident and emergency wards would shut down, organ transplants could not take place and premature babies would struggle to survive without our support. Whenever you have a sample taken from you by a doctor or nurse, it is usually analysed by a biomedical scientist in a Pathology laboratory. Quite simply, without our help and support doctors would frequently be unable to diagnose diseases properly or treat their patients effectively.
Page updated 03/01/2012. NOTE: If printed, information on this page is only valid on day of printing.
