The Laboratory Quality Briefing · Issue 01
Welcome to the first Laboratory Quality Briefing. If you’ve used Pathology Uncertainty before, you may remember it mainly as a place to read about measurement uncertainty. The rebuilt site covers a wider range of questions in laboratory statistics and analytical quality, and it’s easier to find a useful starting point. I’m using this first issue to show you what’s available and how to get to it. You can read each issue on the website or subscribe to receive it by email.
Find what you need more quickly
The redesigned homepage gives you a direct route to free resources, member learning and Lab questions. In Free resources, you can search the catalogue, browse by format or choose one of eight topics. Each topic brings its related guides, articles, tools and teaching together. If you’re after a calculator, a downloadable worksheet or a recording, you can go straight to that format.
The guide collection now has 40 guides across measurement uncertainty, analytical performance specifications, verification and method comparison, internal quality control, external quality assessment, calibration and traceability, laboratory risk, and statistics. The guides start with questions you might meet at work. For example, what can a QC shift after a reagent lot change tell you? Or why does the concentration range matter in a method comparison? Each gives you a worked example and a place to go next.
If you just want to check a term, the expanded Concepts explained glossary lets you search by term or abbreviation, follow related ideas and jump back to the search box from an entry. The Videos and webinars area brings together three recordings on laboratory statistics, performance specifications and diagnostic accuracy, with related reading alongside each one.
I’ve also put 45 Pathology in Practice articles in one place, grouped by series. You’ll need a free account with the publisher to read the full articles. The updated About page brings the professional writing and research publications together.
Choose a route through the learning
For a subject you’d like to follow in order, the free measurement uncertainty reading route takes you from defining the result and the scope of the estimate through to documenting and reviewing it. Or choose one of the six free email courses. Each delivers five short emails over ten days and has its own sign-up. Topics include measurement uncertainty, performance specifications, internal quality control, external quality assessment, traceability and risk.
The annual membership offers five written, self-paced courses with worked cases, exercises and feedback. You can start with internal quality control, plan a study and prepare your data, or work through how to judge an analytical performance specification. If your aim is to build an uncertainty estimate, there’s a suggested route from the statistics foundations to a course that uses routine control data and calibrator information. In My learning, you can pick up where you left off and see your saved progress.
Keep a CPD record as you learn
You can read the free guides without signing in. A free My CPD account lets you keep a private record of what you learnt. Try Record this guide in My CPD on the reagent lot-change guide, or open My CPD from the main menu and search for a resource. You can also record an activity of your own, such as a lesson, workshop or a review of laboratory practice.
For each activity, add the completion date and two short reflections. How did it influence your practice, and how might it benefit the people who use your service? You can download a PDF for an individual activity or an annual report of the activities and reflections you’ve logged.
Tell me what you’re working on
Use Lab questions to tell me what you’re trying to work out and where you’re getting stuck. A short description of the problem helps me see where an existing explanation could be clearer or where a new guide would help. The form is open to everyone.
In future issues, I’ll pick one paper and ask what it adds to laboratory practice, where its conclusions stop and what you could read or try next.
Stephen MacDonald
Pathology Uncertainty