Practice of patient based quality assessment procedure in clinical chemistry unit at diagnostic laboratories in Nepal

Abstract

Background: The clinical laboratory is the major producer of information used to diagnose, treat, and monitor patients. Errors in laboratory testing may occur at many different points in the total testing process (TTP). Application of quality control plays a vital role in recognizing probable errors. The current dominant technique for error identification uses quality control materials has several inherent drawbacks; otherwise, patient based quality control procedure ensures the detection of pre-analytical errors, analytical, post-analytical errors, clerical errors, and random errors that cannot be detected using commonly used quality control methods, thereby improving the reliability of clinical tests. Objective: Thus the objective of this study was to evaluate the practice of patient based quality control procedure in clinical chemistry unit at diagnostic laboratories in Nepal. Materials and Methods: The questionnaire based study was conducted in clinical chemistry unit of diagnostic laboratories across the country. Questionnaires were personally dropped in 217 clinical biochemistry laboratories and were asked to complete a practice based questionnaire. The responses of 169 laboratories were analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2007 and expressed in terms of percentage. Results: In foremost study undertaken, a total of 169 laboratories responded to the questionnaire. A total 65.9 % of the laboratories monitored errors using patient based quality control procedure but not as a part of quality control. Very few of participant s laboratories responded accurately regarding utility and practical aspects of patient based quality control included in the checklist. Conclusion: Practice of patient based quality control procedure was not well established to identify possible errors. Hence, the study extent the existing information and explored that the current classical approaches were not adequate to assure accurate patients test results for specific analytes.