[Management of errors in hospital laboratories--Total Quality Control and lists]

Errors in the daily routine work of a hospital laboratory vary. Therefore, measures to prevent errors must be devised. It is important to perform Total Quality Control (TQC) and to provide reliable diagnostic information and this does not stop at quality control of mere assay value, but extends to consideration of the correspondence to a patient. It is absolutely necessary to reduce errors in a laboratory and to perform TQC steadily. Therefore, the concept of TQC is divided roughly as follows 1) Safe management, 2) Technical management, 3) Information management, 4) Materials management. These categories are then subdivided even further. These categories relate to error management because it is considered that the manuals for technical and information management are important. It is necessary to create an error processing ledger to collect information for error management for TQC and for prevention of errors in investigating causes and to record all processes according to the contents of the error. Such records can be used to prevent recurrences. Thereby, not only prevention of errors but also improvements in the accuracy and reliability of information offered are thought to become possible.