An Overview On Specimen Rejection In Pathology Laboratory

Abstract

Medical diagnostics must be of high quality in order to provide patients with reliable health care. Laboratory medicine, among other clinical fields, plays a critical role in patient safety. Laboratory practice is traditionally divided into three phases: pre-analytical, analytical, and post-analytical. The pre-analytical phase includes the proper sample selection, patient information, sample collection and tagging, sample processing, sorting out, titrations, and centrifugation. Any of these steps may be omitted, resulting in inaccurate results that are ascribed to the pre-analytical phase. Despite the fact that each of the three phases should be given consideration on its own to boost laboratory standards, they are all crucial for overall quality control. The most error-prone phase of the method is the pre-analytical phase. Pre-analytical problems are among the most significant obstacles that laboratory professionals have encountered in the previous two decades. Although there are international standards for blood sampling and standardization of the testing process, compliance with guidelines is extremely poor, notably in the past when laboratory personnel were not involved and nurses or resident doctors used to perform the sampling, the rate of preanalytical errors was very high. The introduction of laboratory automation brings about standardization of workflow and helps get rid of many steps undertaken by humans, which are prone to errors.