Kwong Wah Hospital announces incident of unsent blood specimens
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The spokesman for Kwong Wah Hospital (KWH) made the following announcement today (March 28) regarding an incident of unsent blood specimens:
A nurse of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G) department in KWH yesterday (March 27) discovered a batch of 38 tubes of blood specimens taken for Oral Glucose Tolerance Tests for 19 pregnant women was still being kept in the O&G ward and had not been sent out for laboratory testing. The batch of specimens was taken last Friday (March 24) and should have been sent out to the Laboratory for assay on the same day.
Since all of the blood specimens were no longer suitable for conducting laboratory analysis, the hospital management started to contact the 19 pregnant women yesterday afternoon to explain the incident and also extended apologies. Re-arrangement for blood tests has been made for the pregnant women. Among the 19 affected pregnant women, five of them finished the test today, 10 have been arranged for re-testing within this week and two were arranged for next week. The remaining two have already finished the same test in the private sector.
According to the O&G clinician, the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test is a regular test for a specific group of pregnant women for analysing their glucose level. The delay in testing for a few days to one week would not cause any negative effects to a pregnant woman and the foetus. The incident has been reported to the Hospital Authority Head Office via the Advance Incident Reporting System.
The hospital apologised for the inconvenience caused to the affected pregnant women and will continue to communicate with them to provide the necessary assistance. Prevailing procedures will also be reviewed for a root-cause analysis and appropriate improvement measures will be taken.
Ends/Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Issued at HKT 18:00
Issued at HKT 18:00
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