Principles for Pathology and Patient Safety: 

1)    All patients around the globe deserve standardized, high-quality pathology services.

2)    As patient advocates, to support accurate diagnosis and enable personalized medicine, the International Pathology Patient Safety Advisory Board identifies significant opportunities to improve patient safety by developing and implementing solutions to enhance:

  • Tissue preparation;
  • Specimen/slide identification and tracking; and
  • Prevention of tissue contamination.

3)    We, the members of the International Pathology Patient Safety Advisory Board, find further opportunity to define standardized parameters for data collection and sharing in the assessment of these processes leading to quality measures for laboratory improvement.

4)    We call upon the pathology profession to collaborate with laboratory and hospital administrative partners, clinician colleagues, and the laboratory diagnostics industry to address these opportunities to achieve excellence in patient care.

Members of the advisory board include Phil Branton, MD, Bethesda, Md; Richard Brown, MD, Houston; John Carpenter, MD, Lynnwood, Wash; Yvonne Daniels, MHS, Charlotte, NC; Eslie Dennis, MBChB, Tucson, Ariz (chair); Joachim Diebold, MD, Lucerne, Switzerland; Ramses Forsyth, MD, MBA, Ghent, Belgium; Shane Kohl, MD, Omaha, Neb; Alex Laslowski, BAppSci, Clayton, Victoria, Australia; Shinobu Masuda, MD, Tokyo; and Richard J. Zarbo, DMD, MD, Detroit.