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December Quick Question: Tube Labeling

Dennis Ernst, Center for Phlebotomy Education; Dave McGlasson; and George are preparing an opinion piece for Annals of Blood that describes blood specimen labeling standards. The European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine Working Group on Preanalytical Phase specifies that blood specimens must be labeled prior to collection, whereas the Clinical Laboratory and Standards Insititute standard GP41-A7 requires labeling to be completed on the filled tubes subsequent to collection. This question addresses all blood collection, and is not confined to hemostasis. Our December Quick Question asks you to select your practice, and invites comments. While recognizing that our Quick Question doesn’t resemble a double-blind placebo controlled clinical trial, we may wish to publish our findings in the Annals editorial, along with your comments.

Comments (1)
Specimen Management
von Meyer
Dec 6, 2017 7:54am

Almost none german hospital
Almost no German hospital is labeling the tubes in the presence of the patient. All tubes are prepared and labeled in advance. By special checks a mismatch of patient and label is prohibited. There are even legal demands for immunohematology samples to work this way. It is not allowed to fill unlabeled tubes for immunohematology testing. Therefore the EFLM recommendation fulfills the necessary criteria of bringing reality and patient-safety together. It does NOT specify that blood specimens must be labeled prior to collection as it is communicated above, it just allows this as an alternative, if a risk assessment of this process is done and a comparable patient safety is saved. From this point of view the CLSI document does not meet these criteria. Due to the legal demands, which are higher than a CLSI document, this CLSI document is useless for us.

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