Identify and Reduce Errors in Hematology Testing
Preventing Errors in the Hematology Laboratory to Improve Patient Safety by Linda Sandhaus, MD focuses on real-life, day-to-day challenges that medical technologist’s face in the high volume hospital-based hematology laboratory.

Despite remarkable advancements in automated technology, good quality control practices, and mandatory proficiency testing programs, the routine CBC and leukocyte differential (diff) count remain important sources of laboratory errors with potential to jeopardize patient safety. This eCourse elaborates on the contribution of multiple factors to laboratory errors and demonstrates how investigation and classification of these errors can reveal systematic problems and lead to effective interventions. Some actual quality improvement projects in laboratory hematology are described and evaluated.

Course learning objectives are:

• Identify the most common errors in the hematology laboratory and their potential impact on patient safety.
• Investigate errors in the hematology laboratory to discover the latent and systematic errors.
• Design a quality improvement project to reduce errors in the hematology laboratory.

This self-paced ASCP eCourse by Dr. Sandhaus is intended for pathologists, laboratory professionals, or students. It is worth 2.0 CME/CMLE credits and meets the ABP MOC Part II requirements for Self-Assessment Modules.

Linda Sandhaus, MS, MD, is Director of the Core Laboratory for Hematology at University Hospitals of Cleveland as well as Associate Professor of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Register for the Preventing Errors in the Hematology Laboratory to Improve Patient Safety eCourse.