Special Collection Situations

Broken Security Seal

If a security seal is broken while being removed from the CCF or during the application of the first seal on the primary specimen vial, the collector should transfer the information to a new CCF and use the seals from the second CCF.

If one seal is already in place on a specimen vial and second seal is broken while being removed from the CCF or is broken during application on the second specimen vial or while the employee is initialing either seal, the collector should initiate a new CCF and note in the "Remarks" section how the seals were broken. The seals from the second CCF should be placed perpendicular to the original seals to avoid obscuring information on the original seals. The donor must initial the second set of seals also. The initials on all the seals must match. The collector should then draw a line through the specimen ID number (and bar code if present) on the original seals to ensure that the laboratory does not use that number for reporting the results. The collector must not pour the specimen into new vials.

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