It is estimated that a majority of all laboratory medicine errors are errors that occur during the preanalytical phase of the laboratory testing cycle. Such errors have a significant impact on patient safety, staff workload, and hospital costs.  Correctly identifying patients and avoiding specimen-labeling errors are...

Modern analytical devices for testing biological fluids, such as blood, have now developed a sophistication that ensures the quality of the analytical result is capable of matching that achieved in the central laboratory.    Complementary developments are focused on reducing operator-related and connectivity-related...

In 2005, acutecaretesting.org interviewed Dr Michael Astion, an active spokesperson for patient safety and reduction of lab errors, on the main issues surrounding the topic. Since then, a lot has changed… or has it? In a follow-up interview with Astion, acutecaretesting.org gauges the status of patient safety year...

In most hospitals, the amount of nursing time spent on actual patient care is only 33 %, while problem solving consumes 40 % of their time. That’s the bad news. The good news is that inverting this ratio may be easier than you think.  According to Dr John Kenagy and David Sundahl of the US-based Kenagy & Associates,...

Reprinted and translated by permission of Danske Bioanalytikere, dbio from "Fra hæl eller håndryg", by Jytte Kristensen, dbio, vol no 4, 2007, pp 8-11. Copyright 2007 by dbio. Translated by Radiometer Medical ApS. Norwegian and Danish biomedical laboratory scientists disagree on best practice when collecting blood...

Century City Doctors Hospital (CCDH) is a Los Angeles, California-based acute care medical center that is one of the largest physician-owned and -operated hospitals in the United States. The 178-bed facility was designed and built to be fully digital, paperless, and state-of-the-art, with integrated information...

In the majority of U.S. healthcare institutions, patient wristbands do not contain barcodes, creating a situation where patient data is manually typed into a database or point-of-care device, leaving plenty of room for error.  In light of error statistics issued by the United Kingdom’s National Patient Safety Agency...

Where do you go for help, when you are a parent of a child who stops breathing while it sleeps? If you live in the south of Sweden, you go to Halmstad County Hospital, where a team of specialists are ready to monitor your sleeping child by polysomnography (PSG). The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Halmstad has ...

Mock inspections are a great way to prepare for real-life inspections from regulatory agencies such as CAP and JCAHO. But where do you start? And most importantly, what should you look for? Lou Ann Wyer, Clinical Specialist, POCT at the Virginia-based Sentara Laboratory Services and Theresa Kulik, Point-of-care...

Hospital do Coração (HCor) in São Paolo, Brazil is a hospital for cardiac patients, many of whom are children and newborns. Cardiac patients are closely monitored with respect to acid base and blood gases, and even the newborns have several arterial and venous blood samples drawn daily. Dr Alberto Duarte from the...