The nature, causes, and clinical impact of errors in the clinical laboratory testing process leading to diagnostic error: a voluntary incident report analysis.
van Moll C, Egberts TCG, Wagner C, et al. The nature, causes, and clinical impact of errors in the clinical laboratory testing process leading to diagnostic error: a voluntary incident report analysis. J Patient Saf. 2023;19(8):573-579. doi:10.1097/pts.0000000000001166.
Diagnostic testing errors can contribute to delays in diagnosis and to serious patient harm. Researchers analyzed 327 voluntary incident reports from one medical center in the Netherlands and found that diagnostic testing errors most commonly occurred during the pre-analytic phase (77%), and were predominantly caused by human factors (59%). The researchers found that these diagnostic testing errors contributed to a potential diagnostic error in 60% of cases.