Quality Indicators in Laboratory Medicine:A Fundamental Tool for Quality and Patient Safety / 现代检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Quality indicators (QIs)in laboratory medicine can measure how well a clinical laboratory meets the needs and re-quirements of users and the quality of all operational processes.The identification of reliable QIs is a crucial step in enabling users to quantify the quality of laboratory services.Different QIs and terminologies are currently used and,therefore,there is the need to harmonize proposed QIs.A model of quality indicators has been consensually developed by a group of clinical la-boratories according to a project launched by a working group of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and La-boratory Medicine.The model includes 57 QIs related to key processes (35 pre-,7 intra-and 15 post-examination phases)and 3 to support processes.The developed a model of quality indicators and the data collected provide evidence of the feasibility of the project to harmonize currently available QIs,but further efforts should be done to involve more clinical laboratories and to collect a more consistent amount of data.