Misidentification in the lab
Patient misidentification errors can carry severe clinical consequences due to the potential for misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment. Studies have shown this to be a worldwide issue, so laboratory technicians take extra precautions to avoid mistakes being made by staff within the hospital.
"Test tubes with labels will be handed over to us, but sometimes, we in the laboratory have to print out new labels because the previous ones were damaged, ripped, came off, were wrongly marked/attached or they were assigned to the wrong tests. We in the laboratory carry out more of a correction of mistakes role. Apart from that, we also sometimes get emergency admissions that haven't been entered into the system yet, and in those cases we also need to print the laboratory file labels ourselves."
Germany, Hospital, Head of Laboratory.
