The research confirmed that the majority of the public have little understanding of the pathology process. They do not pause to consider what happens between the sample being taken and the results appearing on their doctor’s desk. There appears to be little, if any, thought given to how samples are tested and who undertakes this. Many in our focus groups believed tests were performed by ‘machines’ or ‘computer chips’ with no expert human intervention. In the public mind, the doctor holds the expertise for interpreting results and making the diagnosis.
“Just that it is space-age now, that they have the computer chips, where you put a fraction of the blood drop on and it is a total test kit itself and it will generate a result straight away; plug into the machine and it generates it.” (General public, Sydney)
“Does a human look at it? No, totally bypassed, they use chips…the images that you see in the media of people fiddling with machines and it looks like they are just feeding the samples in one end and getting the results out the other end.” (General public, Sydney)
“I have noticed that when you get a pathology report back it will come with some sort of letter, so they must do some level of analysis on it.” (General public, Sydney)