Assessing the outcome of Strengthening Laboratory Management Towards Accreditation (SLMTA) on laboratory quality management system in City government of Addis Ababa.
Creators: name: Sisay, Abay
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2014

description: Background; Medical laboratory services are an essential component of health systems. Strengthening these services can combat the major infectious diseases. Laboratory accreditation system is found to be essential to have national and international acceptance of various laboratory test results. Poor quality laboratory services guide to massive cause of over- treatment, overuse of drugs which leads to the emergence of drug resistant and laboratory errors guide the patients at risk of inappropriate care and potentially of adverse events .By recognizing this gaps of the current state of laboratories and the requirements of ISO 15189 particular requirements for quality and competence in Africa, Ethiopia, in 2009, WHO-AFRO established SLMTA in order to help laboratories with stepwise recognition of evolving fulfillment of the ISO 15189 standard instead of a grading of pass-fail. Objectives: To assess the outcome of Strengthening Laboratory Management Towards Accreditation (SLMTA) on laboratory quality management system in Addis Ababa. Methods: The study used an Institutional based cross sectional study design that employed a retrospective and prospective data collection approach on the participated institution of medical laboratory in SLMTA in Addis Ababa city government. The study was conducted in Addis Ababa city government and the data was collected from February –April 2014 and data was interred in to EPI-data version 3.1 and was analyzed by SPSS version 20. Results; The assessment finding indicate that there was a significant improvement in average scores (141.4; range of 65-196, 95%CI =86.275-115.5, p = 0.000) at final with 3 laboratories become 3 star, 6 laboratories were at 2 star, 11 were at 1 star .76% of the respondents respond that their facilities have no work plan and budget for laboratory specific purpose and lack of resources accounts 24% is the reason for this which is followed by absence of System. Laboratory facilities which get adequate and timely manner mentorship were found 2.5 times more likely to get good success in the final status of improvement project (AOR= 2.501, 95% CI= 1.109-4.602) than which did not get it and those laboratory which didn't perform their customer satisfaction survey were 2.261 times more likely to get less final result than laboratory which are conducting their customer satisfaction survey (AOR= 2.261, 95% CI= 1.851-6.007). Conclusion: At the end of SLMTA 3 laboratories become 3 star, 6 laboratories were at 2 star, 11 were at 1 star .The most important contributing factor for not scoring star in the final outcome of SLMTA were not conducting their customer satisfaction survey, shortage of resource, poor staff motivation, and lack of regular equipment service maintenance. Mentorship, onsite and offsite coaching and training activities had shown that a great improvement on laboratory quality management system in most district laboratories. Keywords:-SLMTA, WHO-AFRO, Mentorship, Accreditation.