EVALUATION OF PREANALYTICAL ERRORS USING QUALITY INDICATORS : EXPERIENCE IN A TERTIARY CARE CENTRE

In the past few decades major revolution has been observed in the field of biochemical laboratory testing. Laboratory medicine has evolved as a science and plays a pivotal role in the provision of healthcare to the population and hence there is an ever increasing demand for reliability and accuracy of the lab tests. The quality of testing by a clinical laboratory plays a significant role in the field of health care. There are many different factors that contribute to accurate test results in the biochemistry laboratories. These factors can be classified into three phases: pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical. Pre-analytical phase is the major source of mistakes in a clinical laboratory. Quality indicators (QIs) are therefore required to cover all steps in the pre-analytical phase, from test requisition to sample storage. In this study pre-analytical errors in a clinical chemistry laboratory were analyzed over a period of 6 months.