European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Background: Error in any laboratory starts from the moment any investigation is
being planned till it is interpreted and clinical judgment is made. Entire process is difficult
to perform without error.
Aim : Study of the Errors in hematology laboratory in a tertiary care hospital.
TeerthankerMahaveer Medical college and Research center (Moradabad). Purpose: To
investigate for errors and causes of errors related to different hematological tests in
hematology laboratory.
Methodology: In this observational study, a total of 304,358 tests (95,991 outpatient
department [OPD] and 208,367 inpatient department [IPD]) were received in haematology
laboratory. These errors were further categorized as Pre-analytical, Analytical and Postanalytical.
Result: The Pre-analytical errors constituted maximum number of errors i.e.in 501samples
(94.7% of total errors) which constituted major chunk of errors which is close to 0.16%,
which was followed by post analytical errors which was found in 17cases (3.21% of total
errors) with frequency of 0.0036% ;Analytical errors were detected in least number of
cases i.e.11reports (2.07% of total errors)
Conclusion: Errors in hematology laboratory which is classified as Pre-analytical,
analytical, and post-analytical errors remain the biggest limitation to laboratory service
and it thus has impact on healthcare management and cost involved. Majority of reasons
involved behind analytical errors is within the scope of laboratory and thus can be reduced
to a great extent by training of laboratory staff, participation in quality system and regular
monitoring of equipment’s. We found analytical error to be close to 2% most of which were
related to auto clumps which can be resolved by incubation at body temperature most of
the time as these are cold auto agglutinins which poses analytical problem, especially in
winters. We found Post analytical error also to be insignificant (3.2%), most of which was
due to wrong entry of results, such errors can also be avoided and minimized by close and
frequent monitoring of laboratory reports.