Thousands of NHS samples 'mislabelled'
Updated on 20 August 2009
A survey by More4 News shows a worrying number of clinical specimens sent to NHS pathology laboratories have been mislabelled. Joanna Simpson reports.Â
Following an FOI request to every NHS trust in the UK, to which 120 trusts replied, it emerged that 365,608 specimens were mislabelled before they arrived at the pathology laboratories.
In addition, 11,712 samples were incorrectly labelled by pathology lab staff.
More4’s FOI investigation also revealed there were 46 recorded cases last year where mislabelling was found to have been related either to a patient death or a significant delay in patient treatment.
This does not account for the fact that many incidences of mislabelling would not be attributed to the delay in treatment or implicated in the death of a patient.
Professor John Kay, consultant for John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, and spokesperson for Royal College of Pathologists, told More4 News: "Our laboratory, like many others, is very concerned about this.
Most of those errors actually occurred because we are using hand written request cards, they then come into the laboratory, we have to copy type them and that's where these errors are coming into the system”.
He continued: “A small number of those examples, there will be really serious problems. A good example of that are blood transfusions if the specimen that comes into the laboratory is wrong then the blood product that goes out is going to be wrong and some of them will be important things, like the diagnosis of cancer."
