Why ensuring patient safety in laboratory diagnostics is important

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Well timed and correct analysis is the cornerstone to good scientific apply and an important first step to attaining optimum affected person outcomes. The prevalence of laboratory errors can severely impair the scientific decision-making course of. It’s estimated that 2/3^rd of affected person analysis and therapy relies on lab outcomes. A current examine concluded that the majority of us will expertise a minimum of one diagnostic error in our lifetime. With a view to cut back errors and enhance high quality of care, laboratory professionals have to be made conscious of the affect laboratory outcomes have on the affected person and then again clinicians will need to have a radical understanding of laboratory processes. The apply of affected person security must be adopted in laboratory drugs to keep away from any hurt to sufferers and to enhance the overall testing course of. Sufferers may be harmed not solely by the issuance of inaccurate outcomes but in addition resulting from delayed consequence technology or delayed important outcomes communication, and so on.

India has now recognised the significance of affected person security and is within the means of adopting a affected person security tradition and quite a few initiatives are being taken to handle this concern. In 2015 through the 68th WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia all Member of the Area, together with India, endorsed the Regional Technique for Affected person Security within the WHO South-East Asia Area aiming to help the event of nationwide high quality of care and affected person security methods.

Laboratory errors may be averted by adopting high quality assurance practices, newer applied sciences and thru steady schooling of lab personnel. Medical laboratories should implement efficient high quality enchancment plans to determine and forestall errors in an effort to assure the reliability of laboratory outcomes. Accreditation in compliance with the Worldwide Customary ISO 15189 represents the essential first step. Sadly, solely ~2 per cent of laboratories in India are accredited. There isn’t any enforcement by the federal government for laboratories to bear accreditation. We have to make folks conscious of high quality stamping and which type of a lab they need to be going to get themselves examined.  

One other vital step in stopping errors and guaranteeing affected person security is the event of particular instructional and coaching applications addressed to all personnel concerned. All kinds of knowledge may be offered by a sturdy high quality administration system (QMS) together with the identification of High quality Indicators (QI) that may assist determine undesirable occasions, consider the danger to the affected person, and name for corrective and preventive actions as and when required.

Danger administration constitutes a vital part of the QMS of medical laboratories. Laboratories have to develop a sensible instrument for threat administration that accommodates 5 main steps: threat identification, quantification, prioritisation, mitigation, and surveillance. Potential dangers identification should embody all facets of testing together with preanalytical, analytical and postanalytical phases. Regardless of the automation of processes, some dangers are persistent, and people, if not managed adequately, may lead to a fallacious analysis, fallacious therapy, and finally morbidity and mortality. Due to this fact, identification and mitigation of potential dangers related to laboratory processes must be given prime significance. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of the QMS relies on the cautious evaluation of knowledge collected, employees consciousness of the significance of laboratory drugs to the healthcare course of and steady monitoring of the standard enchancment plan.

With a view to safeguard sufferers’ curiosity, laboratory professionals should help clinicians in choosing the suitable check for the suitable affected person and supply the suitable report on the proper time to facilitate analysis and therapy.

The creator is Senior Advisor & Head-Hematology and Biochemistry, PathKind Reference Laboratory. Views expressed are private.

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