Laboratory requisitions

Ordering laboratory tests is a routine medical activity. Filling out the laboratory requisitions correctly is very important.

The document presented here is from the Institute of Clinical Chemistry of the Inselspital in Bern, but it is similar to other forms found in most hospitals and laboratories.

Requisition identification

It must be possible to trace each sample (blood, urine, sputum, etc.) to a single patient and a single date of collection. This is the purpose of the laboratory requistion number. This number is a unique identifier which combines both pieces of information. The number is found on the laboratory requisition form and on the sample containers. The barcode label can be read by the LIS (laboratory information system), which allows for  positive identification of samples by the laboratory automats.

Self-adhesive labels are formatted for specific samples or receptacles, and color-coded to allow for ease in selecting the appropriate container and label for the test(s) requested.

The corresponding elements of the laboratory requisition forms are colored in grey and a magnified version is shown below.