Question

A healthy 13 year-old boy is in the clinic for his athletic physical for school. The physician orders a routine CBC (complete blood count). The phlebotomist is new and inexperienced with pediatric patients and becomes very nervous. She decided to use a 23-guage needle butterfly system to make it easier on herself. The blood fills the lavender tube very slowly. The MLT in the Hematology lab runs the sample and the platelet result is on 1000,00/uL. Furthermore the instrument found some abnormally large platelets and flags the results as unreliable. Should the tech report these results?

Reject/Accept	Cause of Error	Corrective Action	Prevention
reject

Answer 1

For a good blood sample collection the size of the needle is very important.To prevent hemolysis and changes in the platelets reading it is recommended to use needle size of 18_20G. Here 23G is used which could have affected the sample result.Before reporting the results the tech should identify any faults from their end . This can be right from collection to the processing of the sample.

Therefore the result will be rejected.The cause of error is usage of wrong sized needle,The corrective action is to take a second sample.These types of incidents can be prevented by alloting an experience , skillful lab technician to collect sample in case of children.