State of External Quality Control Program Subscription Among Laboratories and Strategy for External Quality Control Material in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The quality of service provided by any laboratory is a matter of seminal importance to the populace serviced by the laboratory in question. It is therefore paramount that high standards be maintained in the conducting of tests as results forthcoming from the tests will be used for diagnosis purposes. External Quality Control allows for relative assessment of quality among laboratories in the bid to identify dispersion's from a set mean and general accuracy and reliability in the conducting of tests and test outcomes. The status quo pertaining to External Quality Control(EQC) in Nairobi County is such that few institutions are engaged in endeavour and a lack of enforcement of legislation on quality control results substandard service.

METHODS :A mixed methods research design with questionnaire and Purposeful sampling was used to select the laboratories.Of the 201 facilities targeted in Nairobi county 132 availed responses to the study prompts.

RESULTS: All laboratories involved in the study employed the use of internal control measures hence 100% IQC was reported for the sample. The vast majority of the laboratories did not engage in EQC (90.152%). The distribution of EQC outcomes in the Nairobi laboratory reveals varying levels of representation across different categories. The majority of the samples fall into Level 4, accounting for 96(~73%) of the dataset.  Level 3 included 30(23%) Health facilities of the dataset.  Level 5 accounted for 5(4%).Private facilities accounted for  approximately 38% of the EQC participation. Public facilities represented   approximately 61% of the EQC participation. Mission facilities accounted for approximately 1%.

CONCLUSION:The production and availability of locally prepared external quality control material have succeeded to attract the participation of many clinical laboratories both big and small. These participating clinical laboratories were either public, private,or mission. The current study established that most clinical laboratories are unable to participate in external quality control programmes due to the high cost of participation charged by the external agents.

Keywords:  External Quality control,Internal Quality control,Assessment, Dispersions, Accuracy, Analysis.