Tag Archives: Patient ID systems/patient safety (see also Safety)

June 2017—CAP Press released in May Patient Safety in Anatomic & Clinical Pathology Laboratories. Editor Deborah Sesok-Pizzini, MD, MBA, and 11 additional contributors cover handoff communications, technology, tools and methods, human factors, a patient safety curriculum, and more. Dr. Pizzini is chief of blood bank and transfusion medicine in, and vice-chief of, the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is the department safety officer for CHOP Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and she is a professor of clinical pathology and laboratory medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. We asked her about the new book. Here is what she told us.

March 2017—The language of blood banking experts, as they talk about irradiators, transfers easily to a car dealership. How reliable are the newer models? Are you willing to replace it every 10 years or so? Do you keep running it until it dies? What parts are likely to burn out? What will repairs run? And then the word “terrorism” pops up.

February 2014—Recalling a reagent is about more than just removing a product from laboratory shelves. It’s about retracting test results and thus affecting diagnoses and treatment plans. It’s about questioning patient outcomes and revisiting past decisions. “So much of what laboratories do is central to making a diagnosis and determining treatment,” says John Harbour, MD, regional medical director of HealthPartners Laboratories, medical director of the Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital Laboratory, and president of Monument Pathologists Inc., Richmond, Va.