Midterms (Quality assurance)

Quality assurance is a planned actions needed to provide enough confidence that a product or service will satisfy the given requirements for quality. It assures the people that the processes, equipment and services are dependable and accurate. QA is a way of preventing mistakes or defects in manufactured products and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to the customers. 

It is important to assess the quality of services provided and to avoid making errors that would give an inaccurate results which could lead to a much higher risk of danger to the patients. Quality assessment and improvement is where it focuses on the success of the organization in designing and meeting set goals and objectives.

Types of Quality Control

• Internal quality control

This is where you monitor the day-to-day performance of the laboratory tests such as calibration of machines and other equipment

• External quality control

It monitors the accuracy of the laboratory tests. Example is the results of the patient's specimen that came outside the laboratory.

Preventive procedures is a pre-analytic activities towards proving accuracy. Examples are, training of lab staff, performance check, calibration of equipment; if the centrifuge is not functioning well, you should know what to do and and provide a solution to the problem. To avoid that, you should know the preventive procedures to ensure quality control. 

Assessment practices is an analytic activities that are done during the test to determine whether the systems are performing well. Examples are the use of standards and controls as well as a control chart.

Corrective practices is a post-analytic activities done after the analysis or test. If problems or troubleshooting occurs, you should provide corrective measures to solve the problem.

Control of tests should be:

Precise

 Accurate

 Sensitive 

Specific

“Quality begins on the inside… then works its way out.”                                  ~Bob Moawad