Remote support of an external quality assessment program in 10 laboratories in Bhutan, Uganda, and Malawi: Pathologists Overseas experience between 2009 and 2017.

objectivesThis article describes Pathologists Overseas (PO) experience supporting external quality assessment (EQA) programs in 10 clinical laboratories across 3 countries between 2009 and 2017.

methodsLaboratories were enrolled in the condensed chemical pathology EQA program provided by the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Quality Assurance Program. Participants were given an initial 2- to 4-day in-person training, followed by 1 year of active feedback on performance via emails or phone calls by a PO volunteer.

resultsThere were 2 performance metrics: percentage of reported results as a measure of compliance and percentage of acceptable reported results as a measure of accuracy. Laboratories demonstrated high compliance with result reporting, with medians of 69.9%, 71.7%, and 81.3% before, during, and after feedback, respectively. Concomitant medians for the percentage of acceptable reported results were 41.2%, 57.3%, and 53.5%, respectively. Six laboratories had low performance in terms of accuracy at baseline (<60%). Active feedback improved the percentage of acceptable reported results for these lower-performing laboratories.

conclusionsExternal quality assessment programs can be successfully adopted long term by laboratories in low-resource settings. Active feedback requires significant time and effort but could be especially beneficial for laboratories with poor baseline performance.