Surgical Specimen Flashcards
What can a surgical specimen help determine?
- a prognosis
- continuing medical care
- a specific treatment plan formulated on the pathology results
What can errors in specimen management result in?
- patient harm
- diagnosis errors
- treatment/procedure inaccuracies
- health care personnel and/or facility harm
What are examples of patient harm errors?
- physical injury
- psychological injury
- morbidity and mortality increases
What are examples of diagnosis errors?
- delayed diagnosis
- incomplete
- inaccurate
What are examples of treatment or procedure inaccuracies?
- delayed
- unnecessary/inappropriate
- additional
What are examples of health care personnel and/or facility harm?
- personnel exposure to other potentially infectious materials
- potential litigation
- community distrust
- additional costs to the facility/non-payment from insurance carriers
What are the 5 communication processes that results in specimen errors?
- spelling
- fear
- redundancy
- lack of a standardized process
- specimen transport method
what is a lack of knowledge of body part names and spelling
spelling
What is Nursing staff were afraid to ask for the correct spelling?
fear
What are the 2 things that contribute to redundancy?
- Personnel kept a running list of specimens collected and recorded by the pathology lab
- Identical information was required to be entered into multiple documents in the OR
What are the 2 things that contribute to lack of a standardized process?
- Inconsistent specimen read-back process use
2. Inaccuracies in patient and specimen information
What contributed to specimen transport material?
The green specimen transport bag was not transparent
When does the surgical team review specimen identification and labeling?
during the sign out
What are the 5 techniques for specimen handling on the sterile field?
- handle the specimen as little as possible.
- keep the specimen moist with sterile saline unless contraindicated
- cover/contain the specimen
- label the specimen
- protect the specimen
What is step 1 of transferring specimens off the sterile field?
as soon as possible