Medical samples going missing?!

[DNAP]

DD has been under care of GSOH and another well known tertiary hospital for a few years now. Various health issues..has just been approved for a Genome research programme.
She has regular follow up with Immunology, Respiratory, Urology, Gastro, Ortho...as well as our local hospital paediatricians. So a lot of different appointments, tests etc, which means I am very diligent about keeping her notes, requesting copies of test results etc.
As an aside to her main issues, and without diagnosis, DD had been suffering recurrent diarrhoea episodes and was frequently passing pasty white stools. 6 months ago the gastro at the tertiary hospital ordered blood tests to be tagged onto her regular Immunology bloods, and ordered a stool sample. We handed in the sample, and reminded them about the bloods...and not seeing any results mentioned in her clinic letters, we chased them, to be told everything requested, was done. And they were fine. Just had gastro follow up at the tertiary, and were told no stool was tested, and the bloods were never done. No record of the stool sample being received.
2 months ago, she had an ear swab that disappeared. And a sputum sample that was taken during a local hospital stay, on instruction of the consultant in charge, didn't show up on her discharge letter. When I queried it, I was told there was nothing on the system. That too had seemingly gone missing.
This has often happened through the GP also. A stool sample was accidentally discarded by the nurse, and urine samples have been incorrectly processed on numerous occasions, wrong bottle top or label etc..so lab rejects it. And the frustrating thing is that we are never told this. It is only when we chase it, that we realise something has gone wrong, or it just hasn't been sent at all.
If this has been a fairly regular event for one patient, then it makes me wonder just how much more gets mishandled in this way? And unless patients follow things up and specifically ask, then the 'no news is good news' mantra, is certainly not one to be relied upon!
Has anyone else had issues like this?

Yes not from hospital but my last smear test went missing. Again as you say there was no follow up from gp, I had to chase this myself as they again presumed no news was good news. Ended up having to had another as there was no record of it. Not much to say other than I sympathise.

You've just reminded me, I haven't heard anything from my last PAP. I thought it was odd that they once called me in for a second blood test, it didn't occur to me that they might have mislaid it.

I’m a community nurse and the samples (usually urine) often go missing once they’re dropped into the health centre. Nobody ever seems bothered about it and we just have to obtain another one - often tricky.

I think it has ‘happened a lot to one patient’ as you daughter has had an above average amount of swabs/appointments etc. Not saying that excuses it, but I think these things happen from time to time and could happen to anyone having a swab/test, it’s just that your daughter has had a lot of them so statistically she has had a few more lost then average. Definitely complain though, especially if it’s setting back her treatment.

I had surgery recently and needed to take a urine test beforehand. Literally had to pee in a diamond shaped cardboard box and place it on a tiny, narrow shelf that could fit two of those awkward boxes simultaneously, at best. The stickers with patient info wouldn’t adhere to the boxes and were hanging off no matter what. Those flimsy boxes on such a small shelf could have easily fallen, another patient could accidentally drop one when trying to ‘tetris’ their sample onto the shelf, or the stickers could drop off etc. I could definitely see a sample being compromised easily but I guess most of the time there isn’t an issue

It does seem something that is somewhat accepted as being normal. Staff never seem too bothered or surprised. Just do another, is the usual response. But sometimes it is more crucial than that. Being treated for recurrent pneumonia for instance, we want to know what it is! And with UTIs, it's important they know what it is in order to treat, particularly with multi resistant issues. And yet we wait for days to get results, only to ring and find they haven't done it! Which has resulted in more serious infection and hospitalisation on a number of ocassions now. It is interesting whenever there are negligence cases reported in the press, just how much incompetence plays a general part. It's all surely very concerning.

I work in an NHS lab. The biggest problem we have is mislabelling. If we don't know who it is from, or what you want doing with it, we can't help.

My full time job is mostly chasing info on samples. If labelled correctly at source I wouldn't be needed!

I work in a lab OP, majority of the time what happens is the lab never received the samples because they weren't sent or the wrong samples were sent, samples too old, bad labelling etc so they can't be tested. Sometimes the lab screws up of course but most if the time it's the nurses/doctors/etc. If for whatever reason a sample can't be tested because it's the wrong sample etc the lab should be putting out a report saying "patient X sample can't be tested because of xyz reason" which the clinical staff should be able to access and organise a repeat.

It's quite alarming to be honest how many mistakes we catch everyday (the ones that annoy me the most is when we explicitly tell the nurse/doctor over the phone "you must collect X sample in Y manner" and they STILL get it wrong!!)

It can get annoying.
my daughter had samples taken and lost. Nothing life-threatening, she had a nail condition and gp wanted to do a culture to see if anything could be found as to why her nails were growing funny shape/colour. We did a clipping...sent them off.... phoned a month later (i think it was 3-4 weeks for results)only to be told there were no results and to phone the day after to speak to the gp about it. Turned out they were lost, gp all apologetic, said if we brought another sample in they'd send them off again. So we sent another lot of clippings off.... waited another month....phoned...no results!! they'd gone missing again.
3rd lot were taken... sent off... waited a month ....phoned for results to be told there were 3 samples results.... somewhere along the line they had found the other 2 samples.

It's crazy how disorganised it all can be. Must be hugely frustrating for the lab people!
At least we know, it's not just us.
Just had another sample despatched from the surgery today, so fingers crossed it makes it there without a hitch