Exploring the Understanding of Specimen Collection and Delivery and Establishing a Barcode Technology System

Patient safety is an indicator for hospital accreditation and reflects health care quality. Erroneous specimen collection and delivery may be caused by a lack of understanding or an unfriendly work environment and procedure. Thus, reducing the error rate for specimen collection and delivery is crucial for enhancing patient safety. However, few current studies have addressed the differences between nurses, laboratory personnel, and hospital couriers in their understanding of specimen collection and delivery. The introduction of technology into clinical care creates safer, more efficient, and seamless care approaches. However, clinically, a specimen collection and delivery system established according to informatics theory is absent. The objective of the present study is to (a) analyze the understanding the knowlwdge of specimen collection and delivery of nurses, laboratory personnel, and hospital couriers; (b) analyze the correlation between the demegraphics and understanding of specimen collection and delivery among various personnel; (c) compare differences in the understanding of specimen collection and delivery anomalies shown in patient safety systems and the knowledge of specimen collection and delivery; and (d) establish a barcode specimen collection and delivery system according to an Informatics Research Organizing Model (IROM). The present study collected data from 137 participants and employed descriptive and inferential analysis, specifically, Pearson product–moment correlation and analysis of variance. The participants’ average years of service exceeded 7 years. Among the three groups, nurses answered the least number of questions correctly, with an average of 8.29 correct answers. A correlation was observed among age, identity, service unit, and understanding scores. Statistics for patient safety from January 2013 to December 2014 indicated that month, unit, years of service, and shift were correlated with error rate. The most common error was failure to label test tubes. For blood specimen collection, the greatest number of errors was observed in both patient safety incidents and level of understanding. The results of the present study have been used as a reference for planning clinical education and included in the system alerts according to the IROM concepts. The system was completed in August 2015 and is currently undergoing testing. A pre- and postintroduction performance analysis will be conducted after the test results have indicated no anomalies.