Verify the patients identity.
It is everyone’s responsibility to perform his/her job safely and accurately. Patients lives are in the hands of laboratory professionals. One thing that is very important is proper identification. Make sure as a phlebotomist that you are verifying your patients identity every time you prepare to take a sample. Be sure to get the patients full name ( first and last) and also date of birth. You will do yourself a favor by asking the patient to spell their name as well. By taking these steps you insure that the correct patient is having their blood drawn and when you label your samples, you will be sure to be labeling them with the correct name before leaving the patient. Sometimes the patient will request to see the label on the tube, please show them. It is just another set of eyes to double check accuracy. Unfortunately, in my time as a supervisor, i have had to terminate more than one person for mislabeling or misidentifying a patients tube of blood. This error can cause a number of issues if not corrected. First and foremost, if the error is not caught, results can go out to physicians and have the incorrect demographic information. In other words, the doctor thinks they are looking at results for Jane Smith, but the blood really came from Joan Smith. Two different individuals with similar names that have the same attending physician. Do you see the problem? Incorrect medications could be administered or incorrect procedures could be performed because of incorrect patient identity. And this wouldn’t be a topic of conversation if these things had not happened in the past.
Double check your specimen requirements.
Something else to verify would be the proper collection tube. It does not help anyone if you draw the patients blood in the incorrect tube. If you have a question, always verify with the department that will perform the testing to be sure that you are getting the correct tubes and also following the correct specimen requirements for transport and testing. Delays in results can happen when incorrect tubes are collected or handling instructions are not followed properly. These errors are easily avoidable by verifying orders and test requirements prior to collect.
The most common lab errors happen in the pre-analytical phase, which means before the samples get to the departments for testing. The phlebotomist is often times involved or could have prevented these errors. The top 5 errors are as follows :
- patient ID error.
- lost sample.
- sample delayed in transit.
- contaminated samples.
- wrong test performed.
- test performed inconsistent with the written procedure.
As you can see from the error descriptions, we have touched on most of these in this blog. Theses details should never be overlooked. Let’s keep the errors to a minimum and keep the patient care excellent!