This online educational activity has been designed to meet the needs of individuals in a clinical laboratory, including healthcare professionals working as medical laboratory staff in non-waived diagnostic laboratories, technical consultants, supervisors, testing personnel, and laboratory assistants.This course addresses the quality control (QC) requirements for non-waived laboratory testing, as stipulated by the updated CLIA ’88 regulations published in 2003. QC is an integral part of the total testing process and an essential element for producing accurate test results in the clinical laboratory. The lessons include everything from tips for selecting control materials to quality assessment of QC, and additional resources and helpful forms are offered at the end of the course.This course has been approved for P.A.C.E.® credit.
At the conclusion of this course, the learner will be able to:

• Summarize quality control and its purpose
• Predict problems that can be detected by quality control
• Compare the three types of quality control materials
• Outline calibration, calibration verification, and verification of performance specifications
• Utilize the applicable quality control requirements for routine tests
• Outline the contents of a quality control program
• Interpret statistical terms associated with quality control
• Decide when and how to perform quality control
• Compare methods for determining quality control acceptability
• Apply the requirements for reviewing quality control
• Utilize appropriate corrective actions for unacceptable quality control
• Summarize the requirements for quality control documentation
• Choose quality assessment activities that are appropriate for evaluating quality control

This activity will take approximately 4.5 hours to complete and there are no prerequisites. A P.A.C.E. completion certificate will be issued upon successful completion of the course with a score of 80% or higher on the graded exams, and completion of the course evaluation.