Problem	Common Causes	Consequences
Blood Culture received cold or at room temperature	Specimen taken out of hours and refrigerated or sent in pod system	Reduced viability of potential pathogens resulting in delayed or no positivity and failure to isolate pathogen
High level pre-dose assay	Pre-dose specimen taken from administration line just after dose given	Falsely high result
Increased false positivity in viral serology results	Delay in transport or poor handling causing haemolysis	Incorrect report delaying or misleading treatment regimens
Falsely low HIV viral load results	Delay in specimen transfer to the laboratory within 4 hours maximum	RNAse enzymes in the blood cause degradation of the viral RNA genome if plasma not separated within this time period