proficiency testing

Medical term Safety and Compliance

Outside testing of unknown samples to check a lab's accuracy; CLIA does not require it for waived tests, but it is encouraged.

Sources

• Ready? Set? Test! Patient Testing is Important. Get the Right Results. (2025 edition, with appendices: pretesting checklist, temperature log instructions) · Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Related terms

• CLIAClinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments: federal law covering any site that tests human specimens. A site…
• occupational exposureReasonably expected contact with blood or OPIM through the skin, eyes, mucous membranes or punctures as part…
• pathogenAny disease-causing microorganism, such as the bloodborne viruses HBV, HCV and HIV.
• portal of entryHow a pathogen gets into a new host, for example through a needlestick, broken skin or a mucous membrane.
• portal of exitHow a pathogen leaves its reservoir, for example in blood from a puncture site or in droplets from a cough.
• quality controlTesting control samples with known values to prove a test system works. When controls fail, patient results…
• reference rangeThe values expected for a test in healthy people, set by each laboratory for its own method; results are…
• regulated wasteOSHA term for liquid blood or OPIM, items that would release blood if squeezed or are caked with it, and…
• reservoirThe home where a germ survives and multiplies, for example an infected patient, a carrier or contaminated…

Study Safety and Compliance

• Free Safety and Compliance practice questions
• All Safety and Compliance terms
• PPE for Blood Collection: Putting On and Taking Off
• Standard and Transmission-Based Precautions
• Hand Hygiene at the Draw Station