Errors in Transfusion Medicine: Have We Learned Our Lesson?

AbstractThe phrase “patient safety” represents freedom from accidental or preventable harm due to events occurring in the healthcare setting. Practitioners aim to reduce, if not prevent, medical errors and adverse outcomes. Yet studies performed from many perspectives show that medical error constitutes a serious worldwide problem. Transfusion medicine, with its interdisciplinary intricacies and the danger of fatal outcomes, serves as an exemplar of lessons learned. Opportunity for error in complex systems is vast, and although errors are traditionally blamed on humans, they are often set up by preexisting factors. Transfusion has inherent hazards such as clinical vulnerabilities (eg, contracting an infectious agent or experiencing a transfusion reaction), but there also exists the possibility of hazards associated with process errors. Sample collection errors, or preanalytic errors, may occur when samples are drawn from donors during blood donation, as well as when drawn from patients prior to transfusion‐related testing, and account for approximately one‐third of events in transfusion. Errors in the analytic phase of the transfusion chain, slips and errors in the laboratory, comp