Journal of Medical Biochemistry (Jan 2012)
Pre-analytical errors and patient safety
Abstract
Laboratory medicine, as a specialty that had prioritized quality control, has always been at the forefront of error reduction. In the last decades, a dramatic decrease of analytical errors has been experienced, while a relatively high frequency of errors has been documented in the pre-analytical phase. Most pre-analytical errors, which account for up to 70% of all mistakes made in laboratory diagnostics, arise during patient preparation, and sample collection, transportation, preparation for analysis and storage. However, while it has been reported that the pre-analytical phase is error-prone, only recently has it been demonstrated that most of these errors occur in the 'pre-pre-analytical phase', which comprises the initial procedures of the testing process performed outside the laboratory walls by healthcare personnel outside the direct control of the clinical laboratory. Developments in automation and information technologies have played a major role in decreasing some pre-analytical errors and, in particular, the automation of repetitive, error prone and bio-hazardous pre-analytical processes performed within the laboratory walls has effectively decreased errors in specimen preparation, centrifugation, aliquot preparation, pipetting and sorting. However, more efforts should be made to improve the appropriateness of test request, patient and sample identification procedures and other pre-analytical steps performed outside the laboratory walls.
