Work the bench queue oldest first: filter specimens by status and type, open one, or screen a batch of negatives in a single pass.
The Worklist is the specimen queue as the bench sees it: The bench queue, oldest first. It is where you find a specimen by its number, see what stage it has reached, and clear a run of negatives without opening them one at a time.
Seven chips run across the top. Each carries a live count and doubles as a filter:All · Lab intake · Collected · In transit · Received · Screening · ConfirmedBelow them are the controls:
Control
What it does
Specimen ID, LAN or donor…
Searches the specimen number, the lab accession number and the patient’s name
Intake Pending, Collected, In Transit, Lab Received, Screening or Confirmed
Received
When it arrived
Anything not recorded shows as an em dash. With nothing matching, the table reads Nothing in the queue for these filters. — check the chips and the search box before assuming the queue is empty.
Rack lays the same specimens out as a plate: rows A, B, C, wells A1, A2 and so on, in first-in-first-out order. Select a well to include it in a batch; double-select it to open the specimen. Its own footer is honest about what it is: “positions are a bench aid, not stored assignments.”
Selecting a row opens its workflow sheet, titled with the specimen ID and its status badge. Two tabs: Workflow, which offers the action appropriate to the current status, and Chain of Custody, which is the unbroken record of who held the specimen and when. If a status has no action available, the sheet says so rather than offering a dead button.
This is the reason the worklist exists. When a bench run comes back all-negative, you clear the whole tray in one action instead of opening each specimen.
1
Filter to what you ran
Select the Received chip and set the type to Oral fluid. Only received oral-fluid specimens are eligible for a batch screen — everything else goes through its own form.
2
Select the specimens
Tick the rows, or select the wells in Rack view. The action bar tells you {n} selected, and adds ”· {n} eligible for batch screen (received oral-fluid only)” when your selection includes rows that do not qualify. Clear starts again.
3
Select Mark batch negative
The button carries the eligible count. The dialog asks Mark {n} screens negative? and states exactly what it will do: record an all-negative initial screen for every selected specimen and finalise each as a negative result.
4
Name the screening technician
Enter the name as it should appear on the chain of custody. The button stays disabled until you do — an unattributed screen is not a chain of custody.
5
Record
Select Record {n} negative screens. You get {n} specimens screened negative, and any that failed are listed individually so nothing fails silently.
Only run a batch screen after the bench run has confirmed every one of those specimens screened negative. Any specimen with a non-negative must go through its own screen form — a batch marks results, and a wrongly-batched positive is a reported result that was never read.
A site that collects but does not test shows a banner and disables the bench actions: “This site is a collection center — register specimens and dispatch them to your laboratory. Accessioning, screening and reporting are done at the full lab and are disabled here.” That is a property of the site, not of your account.
Whether Laboratory exists here at all — Diagnostics, in Settings → Facility
Role
Whether this page opens. Owners, lab scientists, doctors, managers, nurses and staff pass; anyone else is told You don’t have permission to access the Worklist. Please contact your clinic administrator.
Permission
What you may do to a specimen once you can see it
Action
Who by default
How it is governed
Open the worklist and read it
Lab and clinical staff
Role
Open a specimen’s workflow sheet
Lab and clinical staff
Role
Screen a batch negative
Bench staff
Role, plus the site being a testing site
Read the chain of custody
Lab and clinical staff
Role
Per-person enforcement is opt-in: someone never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing”. A denied action is recorded in the audit log; an allowed one is not. See Staff permissions.
A chip or the type filter is still narrowing the list. Select All, set the type back to All specimen types, and clear the search box.
Mark batch negative is disabled
None of your selected rows are eligible. Batch screening covers received oral-fluid specimens only; urine and anything not yet received go through the per-specimen form.
The Record button will not enable
The Screening technician field is blank. A screen with no named technician cannot go on a chain of custody, so the dialog refuses it.
Some specimens in my batch failed
Each failure is listed with its specimen ID and reason, and more than three are summarised as “…and {n} more specimens failed”. Open those specimens individually — the rest were recorded.
You don't have permission to access the Worklist.
Your role does not include the bench. Ask an owner to correct it under Staff.
Failed to load the worklist
A transient read failure. Select Refresh. If it persists, narrow the filters — a very large unfiltered queue is the usual cause.
Does the rack view remember where I put a specimen?
No. It is a first-in-first-out layout of whatever the current filter returns — a bench aid, not stored positions. Refiltering redraws it.
Why does it say Donor rather than Patient?
The worklist is built around chain-of-custody testing, where the person the specimen came from is the donor. It is the same person as the patient on the request.
Can I undo a batch screen?
Not as a batch. Open the affected specimen and correct it through its own workflow, so the correction is recorded as a deliberate act on that specimen.
How far back does the queue go?
It shows the working queue, oldest first, and is capped so a busy lab still loads quickly. For anything older, search by specimen ID or LAN.
Is there more detail on this screen anywhere?
Yes — the Diagnostics edition runs the same worklist and documents accessioning and screening in more depth. See Worklist.