Risk management in laboratory medicine: quality assurance programs and professional competence
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Laura Sciacovelli
Abstract
To guarantee excellent performance and service, the process of identifying and treating error risks must be integrated into the total testing process. Quality Assurance Programs (QAPs) represent an important tool that allows us to identify errors and pinpoint any need for further systematic investigations, and to rectify procedures to improve the inputs and processes by which the service is delivered. The models used by the laboratory to assure quality and manage the risk of errors have been modified in line with an approach in which the identification of quality goals and the redefinition of professionals duties and responsibilities are indispensable. Error risk is currently high in some areas of laboratory activity, and QAP is needed now more than ever.
The present paper provides some descriptive examples of an approach that can be followed to manage an External Quality Assessment Scheme (EQAS) and quality indicators (QIs), the main tools used by laboratories to assure the quality of their service, for the prevention of error risk. In particular, we describe the correct approach to choose EQAS, to use information from the EQAS report, to design a QI model, and to analyze any QI data. The examples highlight that any well-designed quality system can be ineffective if it is not managed by highly competent professionals with a deep sense of responsibility.
Clin Chem Lab Med 2007;45:756–65.
©2007 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin New York
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Foreword
- Errors in laboratory medicine and patient safety: the road ahead
- How can we make laboratory testing safer?
- “Pre-pre” and “post-post” analytical error: high-incidence patient safety hazards involving the clinical laboratory
- Risk management in the preanalytical phase of laboratory testing
- Recommendations for detection and management of unsuitable samples in clinical laboratories
- Effects of analytic variations in creatinine measurements on the classification of renal disease using estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)
- Process and risk analysis to reduce errors in clinical laboratories
- Reduction of multi-dimensional laboratory data to a two-dimensional plot: a novel technique for the identification of laboratory error
- Does external evaluation of laboratories improve patient safety?
- Risk management in laboratory medicine: quality assurance programs and professional competence
- Point-of-care testing, medical error, and patient safety: a 2007 assessment
- Blood gas and patient safety: considerations based on experience developed in accordance with the Risk Management perspective
- The role of in vitro diagnostic companies in reducing laboratory error
- Application of the Six Sigma concept in clinical laboratories: a review
- One hundred years of laboratory testing and patient safety
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Foreword
- Errors in laboratory medicine and patient safety: the road ahead
- How can we make laboratory testing safer?
- “Pre-pre” and “post-post” analytical error: high-incidence patient safety hazards involving the clinical laboratory
- Risk management in the preanalytical phase of laboratory testing
- Recommendations for detection and management of unsuitable samples in clinical laboratories
- Effects of analytic variations in creatinine measurements on the classification of renal disease using estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)
- Process and risk analysis to reduce errors in clinical laboratories
- Reduction of multi-dimensional laboratory data to a two-dimensional plot: a novel technique for the identification of laboratory error
- Does external evaluation of laboratories improve patient safety?
- Risk management in laboratory medicine: quality assurance programs and professional competence
- Point-of-care testing, medical error, and patient safety: a 2007 assessment
- Blood gas and patient safety: considerations based on experience developed in accordance with the Risk Management perspective
- The role of in vitro diagnostic companies in reducing laboratory error
- Application of the Six Sigma concept in clinical laboratories: a review
- One hundred years of laboratory testing and patient safety
