Basic QC Practices
A user submitted a very interesting scenario: a mysterious discrepancy between the instrument records and the LIS records of QC values. Do you think your laboratory could this mystery?
Vanity sizing is a well known phenomenon in modern clothing lines, both for women and men. But does vanity-sizing stop at the clothes rack? Or have diagnostic manufacturers brought it into the laboratory?
For all its ubiquity in the lab, proper QC isn't easy. Even though every laboratory has to perform Quality Control, that hasn't made the task any simpler. It still relies on the right mean, the right SD, the right control limits, the right rules and numbers of control measurements, and the right interpretation of control data points. If you get one part of this system wrong, it can throw off the correct implementation. Here's an example that was recently published showing the difficulties and challenges of performing proper QC.
This lesson provides a summary of the overall process of establishing and maintaining a statistical QC procedure. The objective of this lesson is to outline all the activities that are necessary -- QC Planning, QC Implementation, QC Operation, QC Documentation and Review -- without getting bogged down in the details of each of these activities. More detailed information is provided by links to other materials on this website.