[Histonet] Re: Two Patient Identifiers on slides

[Helen Fedor]

Hello, I may not have read every e-mail on this discussion but would like to chime in here. I was just having this discussion with someone yesterday. At large research hospitals that have various goals in our mission statements, we are concerned about continuously improving the process to minimize any errors in patient care. But at the same time we also are using these same cases for research. Our IRB's allow us to use the Pathology Archives as a bank of tissues and slides. If the names of patients were on the slides and or blocks that would really make it impossible to do Specimen based research. We really couldn't use any of those materials for research. It has been a process here at Hopkins to try and keep both of these things moving forward, Improving patient care and maintaining access to specimens for research.


Helen L. Fedor 

Prostate Tissue Bank, Manager
Oncology Tissue Services, Manager
Johns Hopkins University
600 N. Wolfe St, | Marburg Room 406
Baltimore, MD | 21287-7065

410.614.1660

http://tmalab.jhmi.edu/
http://prostatebiorepository.org/





-----Original Message-----
From: histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu [mailto:histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Richmond
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 7:07 PM
To: histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Subject: [Histonet] Re: Two Patient Identifiers on slides

Realizing we're talking about regulator compliance rather than good sense here - nonetheless let a pathologist observe that having the patient's name on the slide is a very important defense against mixing up cases at sign-out. Small labs still usually have no identifier on the slide other than a hand-scribbled accession number (two of the three small labs I'm working in at the moment don't - both CAP accredited), and it's easy for the pathologist to misread the label. I saw a mixup like this just a few days ago - it wasn't my case, but I should have caught the misreading when I reviewed the case, which involved a squamous carcinoma that wasn't.

Good management, bad medicine.

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Maryville TN
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