“State of the art” for competency assessment in Australian medical laboratories

Abstract

This paper looks at the results of an audit conducted by the Royal College of Pathology Australasia, Key Incident Monitoring and Management Systems (RCPAQAP KIMMS). The audit was provided in Survey Monkey to 100 RCPAQAP participants in Australia and was open for the duration of August 2018. The aim was to look at the process used to assess competency, how often it is assessed, who undergoes assessment, who conducts the assessment and how formal the assessments are. Responders were also asked to comment on any audits they had performed to check compliance with the organisations competency assessment policy. The audit looked at 6 levels of staff: executive, pathologists, laboratory staff, collection staff, couriers and administrators. While the response rate was poor (estimated to cover 22 % of routine medical laboratories), the demographics indicate that they represent a reasonable cross section of the Australian medical laboratory landscape. The results show that 71 % of respondents do an audit for compliance with their competency assessment policy, only 41 % stated that they were “somewhat” compliant and 58 % are not compliant.