[Histonet] Patient ID on cassettes

[Jeffrey Silverman]

To conform to CAP and state regulations that require two unique patient identifiers on a specimen at all analytical steps, and to cope with a persnickety cassette labeller that is down more than up, we have taken to writing the patient's first and last initials in the upper left corner of the writing surface of the cassette, above the S10- xxxx. Our pencil sharpeners are running non -stop  but it works. Only problem is when a block is sent out for IHC the returned slides are labelled with the initials as part of the reference slides accession numbers and my boss doesn't care for that. Originally we dropped the S in S10- and replaced with the initials to get a little more room, now  we added back the S and placed initials above S10-.

Patient safety dictates that a prossector verify a match among  the labelled cassette and the labelled specimen containers and against the requisition and the number dictated into the gross computer/transcriber. Case by case, on every case. There is no substitute. As for placing the wrong cassettes on the wrong specimen containers, that seems to me to be pure carelessness and a disciplinary issue if it continues. 

When labelling, matching the initials that the microtomist writes on the slide with the patient's name printed on the slide labels provides a final  ID double check if the numbers on the slide get transcribed incorrectly. The initials thing takes minimal effort, but you need to be able to write small LOL.

Jeff Silverman.