Blood gas and patient safety: considerations based on experience developed in accordance with the Risk Management perspective.

It is the responsibility of health organizations to guarantee a high level of healthcare by using adequate methodologies and instruments, creating secure conditions for treatment, and preventing adverse events due to human or system errors. It is necessary to introduce Risk Management programs, and in particular to promote Clinical Risk Management, one of the constituent elements of Clinical Governance, to assure the delivery of high-quality performance and services. In the point-of-care testing (POCT) context, using an analysis of our experiences, we discuss the entire analytical process, including acquisition and usage, while focusing on blood gas analyzers.