Potassium is the one laboratory test more effected by preanalytical errors than any other. When your physicians don't trust your potassium results, everything else is called into question. Does your lab have a credibility crisis?

Potassium Results Your Physicians Can Trust, a DVD from the Center for Phlebotomy Education, discusses how this analyte can be (and often is) altered by those who draw and process blood samples. Over a dozen preanalytical errors affecting potassium in the samples labs test, plus a multitude of patient-dependable and drug-induced variables, are discussed in this highly researched video. The objective: to help those who draw blood samples---and their supervisors and educators---to prevent the process of drawing and handling blood samples from changing the result before they're even tested.

Because improperly drawing and handling blood samples can lead physicians to over or under-medicate, misdiagnose and mismanage their patients with disastrous consequences, Potassium Results Your Physicians Can Trust is a must-see for everyone who touches a blood sample. 

"Potassiums altered during sample collection, transport and processing pose a serious threat to the quality of care every patient receives," says Dennis J. Ernst MT(ASCP), NCPT(NCCT) who produced and narrated the video. "Patients with critically low potassium levels get reported out as normal and go untreated while patients with normal levels get treated for falsely elevated values." 

Some of the preanalytical errors discussed in the video include:

• sample storage and transport temperatures;
• centrifuging specimens twice;
• prolonged tourniquet constriction;
• pouring the contents of EDTA tubes into tubes to be tested for potassium;
• inadequate centrifugation;
• fist-pumping;
• filling tubes in the wrong order.

The 43-minute video includes access to an online exam for in-house use and to obtain P.A.C.E. CE credit.

Watch a preview and get more information.