[Role and future aspects of hospital clinical laboratories in medical team approaches].

The recent progress in medicine increases the routine works of the physicians or nurses and decreases the chances to obtain the new information on the laboratory medicine. Although the patients desire to know their test results in detail, it is likely to be difficult to obtain them from the physician in charge. Thereby, the quality of the medical services may be deteriorated. In these situations, needs of the medical team approaches in which the medical technologists (MTs) in the hospital laboratories participate are increasing. In Japan, there are a variety of medical team approaches in which MTs are involved. In our university hospital, MTs play important roles in the infection control team (ICT), in the nutrition support team (NST), in the educational class for the patients with diabetes mellitus, in the clinical research center, in the order-made medicine realizing project, in the infertility center and in the laboratory information room. In April 2010, the new payment system for the team approaches such as ICT or NST was established. In the future, the team approaches other than ICT or NST could be chosen for the subjects for the payment if they are recognized as important. The goal of the team approaches is to realize a patient-oriented medicine. MTs can reconfirm that they are working as one of the medical staffs through these team approaches. It is important to always find out a possibility of new team approaches.