Basic QC Practices

A reader-submitted example reminds us how common the use (and mis-use) of manufacturer ranges and package inserts can blind laboratories to the true problems occurring in their methods.

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?

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?

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.