Receiving a Sample and Checking It In

Part of Clinical Laboratory (LAB) Training: Sample Receipt and Identity.

About 2 minutes. Free, in your language, no account needed.

Receipt is a decision, not a handover

When a sample reaches you, you are deciding whether it can enter the study. That decision is recorded and it is reviewable.

Accepting a sample you should have queried is harder to undo than querying one you could have accepted.

What to check, in order

Identity first. Does the label match the requisition? Participant identifier, visit, and time point. Every field, not the first one that looks right.

Then condition. Is the tube intact, correctly filled, and the right tube type? An underfilled citrate tube has the wrong blood to anticoagulant ratio and will give a wrong result.

Then timing. What was the collection time, and how long ago was it? This sets the clock you will work against.

Then temperature. Was it transported as the manual requires?

Record what you received, not what you expected

Write the actual receipt time. Not the scheduled time, not a rounded time.

If four tubes were expected and three arrived, log three and raise a query. A log that says four because four were ordered is a false record, and it will be found when the count does not balance later.

The requisition and the label must agree

If they disagree, stop. Do not choose the one that looks more likely.

A mismatch has to be resolved by the site team, who know which participant was in the chair. Guessing correctly is still guessing, and the record will show that you decided.

Quarantine the sample, document what you saw, and query it.

Discrepancies are normal and must be visible

Most discrepancies are small and get explained quickly. That is not a reason to fix them quietly.

A sample received at the wrong temperature, logged and explained, is a controlled event. The same sample accepted without comment is a hidden risk carried into the dataset.

What good receipt looks like

A log entry that a stranger could read in two years and reconstruct exactly what arrived, when, in what state, and what you did about anything unusual.