Abstract
Background
This study aimed to evaluate the ability of comment providers who were responsible for interpreting results in clinical laboratories in China and to improve the quality of interpretative comments.
Methods
Basic information and interpretative comments for five cases of 1912 routine chemistry External Quality Assessment (EQA) participant laboratories were collected by web-based EQA system in May 2018. EQA organizers assigned scores to each key phrase of comments based on predetermined marking scale and calculated total scores for each participant’s answer. Final scores and ranking were calculated according to scores of cases. Finally, we comprehensively analyzed the type of hospital and the professional title of participants.
Results
In total, 772 clinical laboratories, 1472 participants, from different Chinese provinces submitted interpretative comments. Median scores, interquartile ranges and score ranges of the five cases were 13 (11–15, 1–20), 13 (10–16, 0–20), 15 (12–17, 0–21), 7 (5–9, −2 to 14) and 12 (10–13, −2 to 18). The final scores and ranking of participants that came from tertiary hospitals were higher than those from secondary and other hospitals; however, there were no significant differences (0.774). When grouped by professional title, we found that although no significant variability existed among senior, intermediate, junior and others (0.699), it existed between laboratory physicians and technicians, as the median final scores of the former were higher than the latter.
Conclusions
Practice and quality of interpretative comments are indeed different among different laboratories and participants in China. Laboratories should train and assess the interpretative ability of personnel. EQA organizers should also improve the scoring method and establish peer assessors team through this survey.
Acknowledgments
We appreciate the UK National External Quality Assessment Scheme (NEQAS), the Interpretative Comments Educational Programme 2011 of Asian and Pacific Federation of Clinical Biochemistry (APFCB) and Dr. Gordon Challand for giving us copyright permissions of cases for this study. We appreciate the participant laboratories and institutions that participated in the EQA schemes for this survey. We also thank the personnel of the Clinet website (www.clinet.com.cn) who gave computer technology support to establish the network platform for the survey and relevant services.
Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.
Research funding: None declared.
Employment or leadership: None declared.
Honorarium: None declared.
Competing interests: The funding organization(s) played no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the report for publication.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/cclm-2018-0877).
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