An Empirical Study on Laboratory Sample Rejections

Abstract

Clinical laboratory plays a crucial role in the diagnosis and management of the patients. The increased focus on the patient safety and awareness that the information provided by these laboratories has direct impact on diagnosis and treatment requires that laboratories prioritize reduction in error rates. For patients safety the laboratory has the right to refuse samples that are incompletely, incorrectly labelled because of wrong methods of collection, storage and transportation. Despite the remarkable advances and the modern innovations which have transformed laboratory diagnostics from manual and labour- intensive service to fully automated process, the clinical laboratory still shows a number of pre-analytical errors that might lead to erroneous patient diagnosis and treatment that follows. The present study is to analyse the reason for rejections of the tests and lab related incidents. Every sample that reaches the laboratory is considered for the calculation to improve the laboratory practices by using quality indicators. The major findings of the study are that most rejections are happening at pre-analytical phase. The study suggests several changes in the sample collection and transportation process. Rejections of the samples are high because of human error which can be minimised by training technicians and staff members. Policies and procedures specific to specimen collection, transportation and preparation should be strictly followed.