Projects

Project Description

Running control materials is a vital element to ensuring that all the machines are working at optimal levels before any of the patient results are released. Control results are normally plotted on a Levy-Jennings chart in order to easily visualize if they are within acceptable range. Mr. James O. Westgard established the “Westgard rules”, which are generally accepted guidelines applied to the Levy-Jennings charts to make decisions on the reliability of results.13 However, laboratories are still faced with challenges of false rejection and inappropriate use of QC rules. Six sigma is a powerful tool for assessment of test performance in order to apply appropriate Quality Control (QC) rules and other recommendations such as number of runs and levels. Allowable total error (TEa) is a simple comparative quality concept used to define acceptable analytical performance. Hence, this study is undertaken to assess the performance of clinical biochemistry analytes based on total allowable error criteria.