[Histonet] log book

[Kathy Gorham]

Good Monday Morning,  We had a serious incident Friday with O.R.  My aide went down to get the specimens from O.R. about 9am. (which were left overs from the night before).  She did not stamp in the specimens before she left.  When I had time to stamp them in and record them in the log book I discovered that the colon was not there.  Two other specimens from that patient where in the bag but no colon.  So I went down to O.R. to see where it was.  Of course no one knows what happened to the colon.  The doctors are furious by all means.  Now the O.R. thinks the path lab screwed up.  So my questions is how do others log in the specimens as they come into the lab.  We have 2 couriers that brings specimens when we are not in the lab from other hospitals.  How do you make sure that whom ever brings the specimens actually brings the ones they say they do?  Do you have a log book that every specimen that is brought into the lab is written down by the person who brings it in?  Right now we have a log book but it is written in as we are accessing  the specimens.  So the specimens may have been there overnight. We are a very small lab and we do almost everything by hand including writing in the log book.  Someday we want to be able to scan by bar codes but right now we can not do that. Thanks for any help you can give me. 
Kathy Gorham, H.T.