[Quality assessment of urine dip-slides in primary care]

In Norway, approximately 35% of surgery laboratories use dip-slides to assess bacteriuria. From 2000 to 2004 the Norwegian centre for quality assurance in primary health care (NOKLUS) has evaluated how office laboratories assess urine dip-slides.

Once a year participants receive inoculated and incubated dip-slides to read and report to NOKLUS. Target values are determined from assessments in four large microbiological laboratories.

Knowledge of reading dip-slides is insufficient. Only 40% of the participants in the quality assessment program evaluate whether growth is gram-negative or gram-positive, or take into account whether the growth is mono-bacterial or mixed. Many participants send the dip-slide to microbiological laboratories for evaluation whenever growth is significant, also when the growth is mixed.

The programme shows that Norwegian office laboratories do not use all the information they can get from the dip-slide. There is a need for guidelines on this topic in general practice.