Human Factors and Quality Improvement in the Emergency Department: Reducing Potential Errors in Blood Collection

Adverse events in blood collection procedures such as mismatched or unlabeled samples may have critical implications on patient safety (such as wrong diagnosis and treatments). The current study examined blood collection procedures in an emergency department before and after the application of a human factors approach for improving performance quality and preventing adverse events.

In the emergency department of a community care hospital, 190 blood collection events were observed in 2 phases: preintervention and postintervention. Two quality measures were tested as follows: quality measure 1, performing all 7 stages in the procedure of blood collection according to protocol, and quality measure 2, performing the stages of the procedure in the correct sequence according to the protocol. In addition, medical staff anonymously answered questionnaires about their procedure for collecting blood.

Analyses of data collected before the intervention revealed only 2 events in which all 7 stages in the protocol of the procedure were performed and only 1 event in which the 7 stages of the procedure were performed in the correct sequence. In 91% of the events, the patient was not fully identified. Based on these findings, we developed an intervention using a human factors approach to improve the quality of performance. Analyses of data collected after the intervention revealed significant differences (t188 = -14.9, ρ < 0.01) in quality measure 1 before (mean [SD], 4.8 [0.6]) and after (mean [SD], 6.4 [0.8]) the intervention was initiated, which implies improvement on efficiency subsequent to the implementation of the intervention. Improvement also appeared in quality measure 2.

This study illustrates the nature of potential errors in blood collection performance, offering a proactive approach to improve the rate of proper performance.