Mislabelled Hospital Laboratory Specimen-A Risk Assessment Perspective

Abstract

Mislabeling of laboratory samples has been found to be a high-risk issue in acute care hospitals. In cases where hospitals adopted a bar code tracking system to ensure proper identification of specimens moving from bedside to the laboratory, the error rates were reduced from 108 to just 8. It is therefore concluded that adoption of bar code tracking system is an effective strategy for reducing error rate when sample specimen are collected at the bedside and transmitted to the laboratory. In this literature review, we propose to explore the use of bar code technology as and alternative method to reduce mislabeling of patients’ specimen. Although the focus group assembled to explored the risk assessment issues surrounding the mislabeled labeled specimen did not, we believe based on the review of the existing literature that bar code technology is the only method that provide the most patient safety.