Sometimes when you visit your GP, specialist, midwife or other healthcare professional, they will want you to have some tests. These tests may be needed to help the doctor in diagnosing your problem or to check that you don’t have certain serious conditions.
Sometimes the doctor or nurse will take a specimen (or sample) from you and send it to the laboratory for testing, but in other cases you will be referred to the laboratory's collection sites to have your specimen collected. Laboratory staff at either North Shore or Waitakere Hospitals are able to collect samples in the Outpatients' Department, on the day of your outpatient appointment only, for testing at the DHB's laboratories or for referral to specialist centres.
All other Laboratory testing requested in the community, must be taken at a LabTests collection centre, or in the case of a specialist request at DML laboratory collection centre.
The types of specimens taken include blood samples, urine or faeces samples and skin scrapings or swabs from, for example, your throat or ear.