"Bad very bad and dangerous "

Dear Mr Steel, we are sincerely sorry for your experience but also incredibly perplexed with how this situation has occurred.

When our team take blood samples, each sample requires a sticky label of patient identifiable information. This is automatically printed when the sample is taken and routinely stuck to the blood sample bottles after the blood is collected. These are then placed in the appropriate bags for sending to the testing lab.

On 25 July we were notified by the hospital that the previous samples submitted by the Practice had been rejected due to being 'unlabelled' and that new tests should be submitted alongside completion of hospital blood forms.

At your second blood test the nurse remembers you mentioning the 'mislabelling' of the last set of samples and whilst you were in the room, they double checked that the label associated with your blood tests did indeed have your correct name, NHS number, DOB, and the date and time of bloods taken on it and they completed the hospital form that had been sent in addition.

Mislabelling is not a problem that has been reported previously. In addition, the two staff members who performed the phlebotomy were both long standing and very experienced members of the team.

We are now in the process of speaking to the testing laboratory to better understand their definition of 'mislabelled' and to be able to identify how we can ensure this doesn't happen again in the future.

Thank you for sharing your feedback.