Amendment studies for preliminary work of quality control and accreditation of molecular laboratories

Purpose: Molecular genetic tests have important contributions to determine the clinical diagnosis. Not only, the enormous increase in the number of genetic diagnostic laboratories performing related tests, but technological developments at this area also have forced the usage of total quality management and quality standards which appeared at industrial field at first and used commonly at medical field, especially medical laboratory afterwards. Therefore, correct and certain results must be indispensable policy of molecular genetic diagnostic laboratories. To achieve this policy and be able to give test results which are acceptable worldwide some quality standards must be implemented. Accreditation is an important tool to perform this.The goal of our study is not only to determine present situation and deficiency of our molecular and biochemical genetic diagnostic laboratory which has been serving since 1992, in accordance with accreditation standards, but following the determination, to do a preliminary work for preparing documents as the standards require and to be able to give advance information about accreditation of an molecular genetic diagnostic laboratory also.Material and Method: In this thesis, first of all, present state as part of accreditation preliminary work in the light of ISO 15189 and JCI standards predicting for Molecular and Biochemical Genetic Diagnostic Laboratory which is servicing under Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Biochemistry, was determined. According to the determined deficiencies, documenting studies were performed and offers were proposed.Results: In this study, process of working was designated by preparing work-flow schema and also by doing survey studies, laboratory workers? and prenatal diagnosis families? views about service process were learnt. Then, laboratory?s structure, working process and scope of prenatal diagnosis service were documented by preparing laboratory hand book and prenatal diagnosis process guide. Furthermore, documentation of laboratory performance was supplied by examples of procedure, instruction and form.Conclusion: By this preliminary study, absences of molecular diagnostic laboratory were tried to be determined for accreditation process and in terms of some reviser activities, preparations were tried to be done and suggestions were made. We hope our study with its examples of procedure, instruction and form will be helpful for guidance to people who want to prepare for accreditation in future.Key Words: molecular laboratory, quality control, accreditation, documentation