Test Results

The most common test results are laboratory tests (such as blood, urine and stool tests, tests for infections, and cervical smear results) and imaging (such as x-rays or ultrasound scans).

Only results of tests which have been requested by the GP surgery are included in your notes.

Tests which have been requested by other clinicians (including hospital doctors) are not recorded in your notes. This includes blood tests where you have brought a hospital blood card to the surgery, and any imaging (scans) requested by a hospital.

This varies with the type of test. Many blood results are available within 24 hours, but it may take longer for your clinician to review, act on, and release the results. Some more specialised tests may take days or weeks to come back.

Scan results can take longer to be available. X-rays have to be reported by a radiologist before they are sent to us, and this may take days or weeks. Ultrasound scan results are usually available within days.  

All results are reviewed by a clinician, who will usually contact you or ask you to book an appointment if they are concerned about any of your results or would like to discuss further with you. However, after you have tests you should check your results on one of the NHS patient apps or, if you are unable to do this, phone our receptionists after 1:30pm to receive the results. Please note that receptionists are not able to discuss the meaning of results, so if you are concerned or would like to discuss them further, please book a routine appointment with a doctor or physicians’ associate.

Please do not contact us to discuss hospital test results as we do not have access to these. Your hospital clinician will contact you about these.

A normal range is chosen by the lab based on statistics and the average population that they see. Normal ranges are set so that 95% of normal results will be within the range. This means that 1 in 20 normal results would naturally be outside this range. This means that if you are completely healthy and have 20 tests, you would be expected to have an average of one result marked as “abnormal” based on these statistical “normal” ranges.

“Normal” ranges are based on an average White British patient. Many ethnicities have different normal values, which are not taken into account by our laboratory. For example, African people often have lower levels of neutrophils (a kind of white blood cell), and South Asian people often have smaller red blood cells. In both cases this is normal for them, and is not harmful, but it would be flagged as “abnormal” by the laboratory.

What is normal for a person also varies by age and factors such as pregnancy, medications taken or long-term conditions. However, the laboratory “normal” ranges do not take this into account.

Some people have particular results that are always slightly outside the statistical “normal”, but it is normal for their body. Just as different people have different faces and hair, laboratory results show a range of variation between people.

As described above, there are lots of reasons why results can fall outside the average “normal” range set by the laboratory. When reviewing results clinicians take into account factors such as your ethnicity, gender, age, regular medications and medical history, as well as your results as a whole and your previous results. This allows them to pick out results that may be significant and need to be discussed with you or followed up with further tests or medication.