Frequency of Specimen Rejection and Associated Factors at St. Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2014-04
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Introduction: Laboratory testing is an integral part of the clinical decision-making process,
and results of laboratory testing often strongly influence medical diagnoses and therapies.
Quality of specimen is an important factor that affects the accuracy and usefulness of
laboratory results. The problem is high in resource poor countries like our country, Ethiopia.
Identifying the types, frequency and associated factors influencing the quality of clinical
samples is important for designing appropriate interventions to prevent their generation
and Serology departments. Compared with the respective frequency with which they collect
the specimen, laboratory personnel had significantly fewer rejected specimens than
Nonlaboratory personnel. The proportion of specimens that were rejected in emergency
department and inpatient services were twice more than for the outpatient services.
Conclusion: Our finding shows the problems of specimens in the preanalytic phase and the
factors involved in rejection of specimens, particularly with respect to specimen collections
performed outside the laboratory walls by Nonlaboratory personnel who are not under the
direct control of the laboratory; moreover, the finding shows that the rates of specimen
rejection are higher for inpatients and ED than outpatients, owing to the performance of
outpatient procedures by personnel under direct laboratory control.
and hence improving the quality of laboratory service. Different literatures showed that
more than 70% of errors in the laboratory occur in the pre analytical phase.
Objective: The purpose of the study is to determine the frequency of specimen rejection
and associated factors of specimens submitted for different tests to the St. Paul hospital
millennium medical college, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Methods: Cross sectional study design was applied at St. Paul hospital millennium medical
college medical laboratory. A total of 8063 specimens were collected during the study
period. The quality of all specimens submitted to laboratory during data collection period
were checked and inappropriate specimens were recorded in data collection checklist
format. The data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 16.0 software.
Result: Of 8063 total specimens submitted for testing to the laboratory of St. Paul hospital
millennium medical college during the data collection period, 116(1.4%) were rejected. The
most frequent reason for rejection was hemolysis of specimen, which occurred much more
frequently than the second most cited reasons, clotted specimens and unlabelled
specimens. Compared with their respective frequency of rejection of specimens by type of
requested laboratory service, significantly more rejected specimens occurred in Hematolog
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Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College