ABSTRACT
Objective To establish an external quality assessment ( EQA) system of genitourinary tract secretions routine testing in Guizhou Province and improve the overall testing level.Methods From 2009 to 2011, more than 50 clinical laboratories in different grade hospitals from Guizhou Province were enrolled as participating units every year.EQA was carried out twice a year.Each time, five slides of high quality Wright′s or Gram stain smear of the genitourinary tract secretions or photographs obtained from these smears were selected to send to the participating laboratories for testing, and the feedback results from each laboratory were analyzed.The qualification was judged by the coincidence rate equal to or more than 80%. The average coincidence rates of each time and each year were statistically analyzed by Chi-squared test. Results From 2009 to 2011, the number of EQA participating units increased from 55 to 96, with an average return rate of >80%.Coincidence rates <80%of the 6 EQA results in the 3 years were as follow:four times for coccobacteria (73.7%,77.8%,61.1%,77.1%), twice for bacillus (75.6%,79.3%) and coccobacillus (64.3%,52.1%), once for infusorian (79.7%), epithelial cells (76.1%), neutropenia (75.7%) and cleanliness (71.3%).There were six batches of 30 quality assessment controls (accounting for 20.0%) in the six EQAs had the coincidence rate of <80%.Eleven items of 30 quality assessment controls with 1 to 15 batches were unqualified ( average coincidence rate of<80%) respectively.The item with the highest total average coincidence rate was suspected gonococcus (94.2%), and two items with the lowest total average coincidence rates were coccus and coccobacillus ( 77.0%, 75.2%, respectively ) . Conclusions This EQA program carried out within a certain range of clinical laboratories achieved good results:participating units increased significantly;the total score of all the items showed an obviously upward trend;the quality awareness of clinical lab technicians has enhanced to a certain extent.In this study, EQA system of genitourinary tract secretion routine testing were preliminarily established in Guizhou province, which provided a reference model of internal quality control ( IQC ) and EQA for clinical laboratories and higher authorities, and will be bound to have a positive impact on improvement of the overall level of genitourinary tract secretion routine testing.