Dr B.K. Rana, Founding CEO, Quality & Accreditation Institute

As part of efforts to ensure medical laboratory professionals are equipped with the requisite knowledge and competencies in quality and safe healthcare delivery, a number of practitioners have completed a week’s intensive training in different aspects of medical laboratory practice.

Organised by the Africa Institute of Healthcare Quality, Safety & Accreditation (AfIHQSA) in collaboration with the Quality and Accreditation Institute (QAI) in India, the course among other objectives was to enable participants “understand basic quality management systems” and help them appreciate “their role and ability to advance patient safety through medical diagnostics”.

The virtual training session which started on August 22, to August 28, 2022, brought together medical laboratory scientists interested in quality management systems from eight healthcare facilities in the country.

According to AfIHQSA, the organisers of the training programme, the content of the ‘Accreditation Standard and Internal Auditing’ course (ISO 15189:2012) was “aligned to International Standardisation Organisation (ISO 19011) guidelines for auditing quality management systems and tailored to be relevant to the assessment of medical laboratories.”

Participants were taken through, presentations, discussions and case studies and would subsequently undergo a six-week fieldwork with mentorship to enable them audit any medical laboratory of their choice using the ISO 15189:2012 standards and write a report. Upon successful completion, participants will be certified by AfIHQSA & QAI as Internal Auditors. This is a certificate of competence.

As per accreditation requirements, organisers of the course said it was important for the “Quality Manager of a Medical Laboratory or any Biomedical Scientist who is interested in a career in Healthcare Quality and Safety to get trained in a course which covers Quality Management Systems (QMS) and Internal Auditing.”

The trainees were exposed to the rudiments of performing an internal audit, composing audit findings, preparation of audit report, characteristics of an effective internal auditor, among other subjects.

Certified Quality Management and Safety (QMS) as well as Medical Laboratory Internal Auditors, according to AfIHQSA, would be expected to renew their certification every two years and “there will have to be evidence of practice as part of the renewal process”.

Facilitators included: Dr B.K. Rana, the Founding CEO of Quality & Accreditation Institute; Mrs Comfort Nyameba Opoku, a Senior Clinical Laboratory Quality Manager Health Programmes at US Pharmacopeia (USP), and Dr Elom Otchi, an International Consultant in Organisational Development and Healthcare Quality & Patient Safety; and Technical Director of AfIHQSA.