Conference abstract
Assessment of the Tamale West Hospital laboratory, Ghana, 2017
Pan African Medical Journal - Conference Proceedings. 2017:3(19).16
Oct 2017.
doi: 10.11604/pamj-cp.2017.3.19.132
Archived on: 16 Oct 2017
Contact the corresponding author
Keywords: Medical laboratory, assessment-based accreditation, laboratory
Oral presentation
Assessment of the Tamale West Hospital laboratory, Ghana, 2017
Razak Gyesi Razak Isshaku1,&, Francis Broni1, Donne Ameme1, Ernest Kenu1, Samuel Oko Sackey1, Priscillia Nortey1, Edwin Andrew Afari1
1Ghana FELTP, Accra, Ghana
&Corresponding author
Razak Gyesi Razak Isshaku, Ghana FELTP, Accra, Ghana
Introduction: medical laboratory plays a crucial role in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. This role means that medical laboratories require accreditation, constant monitoring and assessment to ensure that their results are of the highest quality to inform the appropriate public health action. There is an urgent need, therefore, to strengthen laboratory systems and services in the country. Laboratories in Ghana generally do not go through assessment-based accreditation before they start operations. As a result, a lot of the laboratories in the country are not accredited. In recent times, however, there has been a clarion call for the assessment-based accreditation of both public and private medical laboratories. We conducted this study to assess the preparedness of the Tamale West Hospital laboratory toward accreditation.
Methods: we conducted a cross-sectional survey from the 9th to 13th January 2017. We used the World Health Organization Stepwise Laboratory (Quality) Improvement Process towards Accreditation (WHO-SLIPTA) checklist to collect information on the twelve areas of quality laboratory management systems. Each area assessed was scored and the laboratory rated on a scale of no star (0 - 142 points) to five stars (244- 258 points).
Results: the overall assessment score was 34.9% (90/258). There was no evidence of management reviews, client management, occurrence management and internal audit. The laboratory scored good marks in organization and personnel (65%) and information management (66.7) but scored poorly in document and record (0%) and internal audit (0%). The laboratory was rated no stars.
Conclusion: the laboratory performed poorly in most areas of assessment and is at the lowest level of strength. It is recommended that the hospital management provides opportunities for laboratory staff to be trained on quality laboratory management systems.
