One of the more serious mistakes we can make as nurses, is to incorrectly identify a blood specimen we are sending off to pathology.

This is known as ‘Wrong Blood in Tube’ or WBIT, and can result in incorrect treatment being given to a patient based on their ‘wrong’ pathology results or even more seriously, a wrong blood transfusion being administered. Mistransfusion error is a leading cause of serious morbidity and mortality from blood transfusions.

It is estimated that WBIT occurs at a rate of around 1 in 2000 samples taken. Incorrectly identifying the patient and mislabelling the pathology tubes account for up to 15% of such errors. However the actual number is thought to be much higher than this as many of these types of errors are ‘discovered’ prior to the specimen being sent and therefore not reported (as a near miss)...

To continue reading, visit impactednurse.com