The Preanalytical Errors In The Healthcare System

The College of American Pathologists or CAP is the accrediting organization for laboratory and testing personnel. CAP’s “accreditation process is so thorough, the Joint Commission [and CMS] accepts …their standards” in place of conducting their own survey of the hospital’s laboratory and personnel (Gartee, 2011, p. 47). This is because of the guidelines they follow to maintain their integrity and to remain the industry standard. In recent years, the “CAP [has] developed new check list” for continued improvements. Additionally, they are continuing to vet the requirements for the new next-generation sequencing or NGC-based test that is speeding laboratory procedures. So much so that the recent adoption of the new technology for clinical testing” was done prior to the new standards being approved (Aziz, et.al. 2015, p. 481).

Section 2 of this report, Errors in Health Care: A Leading Cause of Death and Injury, surveys the writing on mistakes to evaluate current comprehension of the greatness of the issue and distinguishes various issues that hinder consideration regarding persistent security. A general absence of data on and attention to mistakes in human services by buyers and shoppers makes it unthinkable for them to request better care. The way of life of pharmaceutical make a desire of flawlessness and ascribes mistakes to lack of regard or inadequacy. Obligation concerns demoralize the surfacing of mistakes and correspondence about how to amend them. The absence of unequivocal and reliable models for understanding wellbeing makes holes in authorizing and accreditation

Congress held hearings at which people who had been harmed by laboratory errors testified. These hearings revealed serious deficits in the quality of work from physician office laboratories and in Pap smear testing results (R. D. Feld, M. Schwabbauer, and J. D. Olson, 2001, The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act [CLIA] and the physician's office laboratory; Virtual Hospital, University of Iowa College of Medi-cine [www.vh.org/adult/provider/pathology/CLIA/CLIAHP.html]). In 1988, Congress once again responded to public concerns about the quality of laboratory testing by passing CLIA '88. CLIA '88 expanded the laboratory standards set by CLIA '67 and extended them to include any facility performing a clinical test. Currently, under CLIA '88,

With the passage of Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) Act the patient would know that unsafe practices and poor quality within any laboratory will not be tolerated. CLIA rules for laboratory testing are more standardized because it outlines the expectations of laboratories. This passage would allow the patient and/or their personal representative access to his or her laboratory test reports and the results of such test from the laboratory. The patient would know that this amendment requires laboratories to implement policies and procedures relating to a patient request for information. Also, the patient would know that there must be a proper verification of identification before he or she has access to PHI. Any laboratory

There should be non-punitive policy for recording of errors and near-misses. So, that practitioner can disclosed their mistake without any fear (Lambton College in Toronto,2017). Easy and effective incident report system should be implemented to save the time and work load. Provision of training related to reporting system should be there to clear all the doubts of health personnel and improve quality of care (Douglas & Peter, 2010).

Competency Assessments are regularly carried out by the laboratory head/supervisor so that they get an idea whether all the employees are competent enough to perform the various laboratory tests/procedures on day to day basis(4). If for instance a particular team member is struggling with some procedure then they may not produce the correct results which will affect patient care, as the patient will receive the wrong set of results, thus it will cost them more money and time for their treatment. Thus, these assessments are ongoing throughout the year, plus QAPs are also done regularly in the laboratory to access the skill, performance of all the team members.

Laboratory errors have a negative impact on the patient and the healthcare system. Errors result in wasted time, resources and supplies, decrease efficiency, and pose increased risk to the patient (Osborn, 2017). While there are three phases in the laboratory practice where lab errors can occur, pre-analytical, analytical, and post-analytical, the pre-analytical stage is where the majority of lab errors transpire (Hammerling, 2012). The pre-analytical phase is composed of many steps that occur both before and after the specimen reaches the laboratory (Kaushik & Green, 2014). The complexity to this phase contributes to the pre-analytical phase being the most error prone part of laboratory

Since a large part of this lab was based on human measurement, for example determining which pH sticker the dipstick most closely matched, or what the urine smells or looks like, or how much glucose is present, it is very possible that all measurements are slightly off, which could affect the diagnoses for each patient. Also, the diagnoses could be wrong because each sample only displayed a few of the symptoms for each of their respective diagnoses.

To be a medical professional is required very high level of professionalism in every diagnostic testing, as a future medical laboratory professional, I understood what it matters most is not the volume of testing I perform matters but the quality of the testing matters most. At this point know I fully understood the codes of ethics expected from medical laboratory professional from what we covered in

The materials used for this lab were a 250 ml beaker, 4 glucose testing strips, a dialysis tube that was greater than or equal to 12 centimeters in length, a 50 ml beaker, DH2O, IKI solution, 15% m/v glucose solution, 1% m/v starch solution, a quadruple beam balance

Latent failures in healthcare system level external to the hospital and its parent company. The hospital is under two contracts, and it had not updated its policies and procedures’ manual

The United States Health Care System currently has a unique quantity of the different types of medical care that the system offers. Regardless of this fact, many issues arise when it comes to assuring high quality care for everyone. Not all is well since the current health care system is a top economic and social problem for Americans (Health Care Problems, 2015). Many issues such as medical errors, quality of care, and other issues can impact the health care organization such as hospitals, clinics, and physicians. One of the issues is medical errors. They occur when a hospital or doctor provide an inappropriate service of care. Medical errors are defined as human errors in health care and reflects the deterioration of the relationship between patients and the health care system. This paper attempts to examine the medical errors and its impact on health care, while recommending changes to company corporate structure, governance, culture, focus, and social responsibility, and recommend reallocation of resources to prevent the issue from repeating in the future (Health Care Problems, 2015).

Mistakes and errors can occur normally in our clinical decisions in our clinical settings. In physical therapy settings, these errors could be resulted from such unintended factors such as insufficient experience in achieving some tasks and lack of cognitive and manual skills. The literature showed that the medical errors were not mainly occurred by the inadequate scientific knowledge where they are mostly cognitive in nature, and self-awareness is a way to prevent these errors (Nendaz & Perrier, 2012). The medical errors can be reduced and patient’s safety can be ensured if the physical therapists set some attainable goals that assist in decreasing the medical errors starting from self-awareness about these errors.

Diagnosis: The doctor performed a CBC and tested the chemistry of the sample. Sadie had a glucose concentration of 525 mg/dl, far outside of the normal range of 80-120 mg/dl. Sadie was diagnosed

Medical errors occur for a variety of reasons. For example, errors can happen when proper documentation doesn’t take place. Documenting things such as allergies, medication, and past surgeries can be very important to the patient chart. Errors such as these an even cause death. “An estimated 1 million medication errors occur each year, contributing to 7000 deaths”.