Quality assurance programme in haematology at a teaching hospital in the eastern region of Nepal.

Quality assurance in haematology laboratory is intended to ensure the reliability of the laboratory tests. A quality assurance programme has two main aspects, namely, internal quality control and external quality assessment. A two year experience of quality assurance in haematology laboratory at B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Nepal, is presented here. As a part of internal quality control, test results in the laboratory were scrutinized before release on a daily basis. Inconsistent result were checked for the given values with control material. In addition, the laboratory is a participant of the 'External Haematology Quality Assurance Programme' conducted by WHO regional reference centre at AIIMS, New Delhi, India. Variations related to errors in manual and autopipetting, calibration and inter-observer differences have been noted from time to time and rectified. The programme has helped us to deliver quality service in haematology laboratory at BPKIHS.