WBIT: How do we ensure you get your patient’s results (and not someone else)

Have you ever looked at a blood result on a patient of yours that is very surprising? Maybe they came to clinic, looked well, didn’t feel tired but unexpectedly had a haemoglobin of 8g/dL? Or you are doing your ward rounds and someone you are about to discharge has a Potassium is 2.2 – you do an ECG and this is normal? If this or scenarios like this ring a bell, you should consider WRONG BLOOD IN TUBE – WBIT pronounced ‘wi-bit’. Proportionately speaking WBITs are rare events in laboratory medicine occurring in <0.01% of samples 1 However, when a laboratory, such as ours churns out over 4 million FBC’s a year, this translates into quite a few WBITs.

In CUH and University Hospital Kerry we have done much ongoing work in documentation and prevention. 2, 3 We describe some of this below.