This Quality System Essential course is about detecting, reporting, investigating, tracking, and trending events that do not conform with your laboratory’s established policies, processes, and procedures. It describes ways to learn about how well your laboratory is functioning by taking the time to analyze where problems are occurring and why.

At the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Summarize a nonconformance and list several examples
• Differentiate between remedial and corrective action
• Outline the nonconforming event management process
• Predict the benefits of “no-fault” nonconformance reporting
• Classify nonconformances
• Demonstrate two tools for data presentation
• Categorize four types of nonconformances that are high priority for process improvement

This course has been approved for P.A.C.E.® credit. The suggested prerequisites for this course are:

• QMS: Introduction to Quality Management in the Medical Laboratory

• QSE Process Management