How ISO-15189 laboratory accreditation assures patient safety? / Kako ISO-15189 akreditacija laboratorija osigurava bezbednost pacijenta?

Summary: Healthcare is a complex profession involving the state-of-art technology and sometimes leading to unintentional harm. Many factors contribute to the occur rence of medical errors. Patient safety is one of the most serious global health issues and defined as the absence of pr eventable harm to a patient during any pr ocess of medical car e. The frequency of medical er rors is higher than expected. It has been concluded that the majority of medical er rors are not because of the individual attitudes but mainly caused by faulty systems or pr ocesses leading the staff to make mistakes or fail to pr event them. P atient safety is a shar ed responsibility comprised of many stakeholders such as society, patients, nurses, educators, administrators, r esearchers, physicians, government and legislative bodies, pr ofessional associations and accr editing agencies. Medical laborator y services are essential to patient care and need to be available to meet the needs of both patients and car egivers. ISO15189:2007 Medical Laboratories-P articular requirements for quality and competence, an inter nationally recognized standard containing r equirements necessary for diagnostic laboratories to demonstrate their competence to deliver r eliable laboratory services. It applies quality system r equirements to the clinical laboratories with a str ong focus on responsiveness to the needs of patients and clinicians. Applying the per formance improvement strategies focusing on different phases in total testing pr ocess will significantly reduce the errors and therefore will improve the patient safety. In this way, laboratory professionals contribute to improvement of safety and outcomes of care by working in interdisciplinary approach manner.