Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Medical laboratory professionals on use of Internal Quality Control (IQC) for Clinical Laboratory Tests among Selected Health Centers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2014-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background:
Internal quality control (IQC) is designed to detect, reduce, and correct
deficiencies in a laboratory's internal analytical process prior to the release of patient results, in
order to improve the quality of the results reported by the laboratory. As different studies
indicated, 5% to 10% of laboratories are deficient in IQC practices, including IQC frequency,
use of appropriate material, and statistical processing. Understanding what medical laboratory
professionals know about IQC, their thinking about it and their actual practice of what they know
will help to design solutions for improving quality of medical laboratory service.
Objective: To assess Knowledge, altitude and practices (KAP) of medical laboratory
professionals on the use of IQC for laboratory tests among selected Health centers.
Methods: Cross sectional study design was employed from December 2013 to May, 2014 to
assess KAP of IQC for laboratory tests on 175 medical laboratory professionals working in 30
selected health centers in Addis Ababa. The data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version
19.0 soft ware. Descriptive statistics was computed for most of the study variables. Logistic
regression analysis was used to determine associations with dependent and independent
variables; crude and adjusted odds ratios were used to see the strength of the association and
control for confounder‟s effect. P values less than 0.05 were taken as statistically significant.
Result: From a total of 175 study participant majorities (81.7 %) had better Knowledge about
preparing in house made IQC and 18.3 % have no knowledge about it.. All in all 98 (68.5%) of
the study participants did not face failed result for IQC while 45 (31.5%) had faced failed result.
And their decision for failed IQC result was 21(46.6%) immediately reject whereas 24 (53.3 %)
of them would repeat the test before rejecting the result. When study participant's feeling was
classified as bad, good, very good and excellent, 4 (2.3%) had bad, 79(45.1%) had good, 38
(21.7%) had very good and 54(30.9%) have excellent attitude towards IQC.
About 32 (18.3%) of the study participants had never performed IQC while 143(81.7%) of them
declared that they perform IQC. However, only 49.1% had documented their IQC result and the
remaining 50.9% have no document. Regarding frequency of IQC, 64 (57.6%) of them perform
IQC per batch, 24 (21.6%) daily, 6 (5.4 %) monthly and 17(15.3%) claimed performing IQC
weekly. And over all 53(47.8%) of the respondents accepted this frequency
Major reason for not performing IQC for laboratory tests in this study were work load, difficulty
of IQC materials to prepare for some routine tests, cost of IQC materials, lack of supply, lack of
staff members. The major factors for good IQC practice in this study were educational level,
work experience, participation in SLMTA program. Taking LQM training, however, had no
significant association both with Knowledge as well as IQC practice.
Conclusion: The study demonstrates good IQC knowledge and attitude which is not translated
into an equivalent practice as demonstrated by poor documentation. Working in a laboratory
which participates in SLMTA has a positive association while LQM training has no significant
association with IQC knowledge and practice. Hence, practice focused training as well as
motivation activities are needed to promote the use IQC and reduce rate of error for laboratory
results
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Keywords
Medical laboratory, Clinical Laboratory