Total quality in laboratory diagnostics. It's time to think outside the box

Abstract

Recent years have seen a significant improvement in perceiving the importance of patient safety and the need to reduce the burden of preventable errors. Laboratory medicine is paving the way throughour a series of projects worldwide. Given that the primary obstacles are no longer technical, patient safety requires however a multi-faceted approaches, encompassing total control of activities, from test request to results reporting. As such the time has come to think outside our traditional laboratory "box" and target those extra-analytical processes that are more vulnerable to errors.