The Current Laboratory Quality Managements Practice in Ethiopian Public Hospitals from July 2012 up to March 2013

Background: Accurate clinical laboratory testing service is key component clinical service to diagnosis disease, follow up and treatment patient care. The levels of quality management’s practice in Ethiopia were not adequately assessed. Therefore, this study was aimed to determine the quality of clinical laboratory managements practice and associated factors in across the country. Method: this study was used cross-sectional study design with quantitative approach using minimum standard set out by the ministry. No need of sampling technique and sample size determination rather all public hospital laboratories who conducted the report through DHIS2 were included in the study. Data was collected by quality officer of hospital itself. SPSS version 20 was used for data entry, data cleaning and data analysis was used to determine distribution and comparing the mean was also used to see significance difference across the reporting time, level of hospitals and regions. Result: Highest mean score of laboratory quality management practice 232 (92%) was seen in related to establishing system for document and record managements. The practice in related laboratory information managements was 220 (87%) and laboratory supply supplies managements system 218 (87%) and incident handling system 211 (84%). Lowest mean score 101 (40%) were observed in the standard related to cold chain managements system for blood and blood product until used by the prescriber. There is no significance difference between mean score of laboratory quality managements practice across the time, level of hospitals and region but better implementation score laboratory quality managements practice were observed in specialized compressive as compared to general and primary hospitals. Conclusion: In considering all the questioners were a minimum standard set out by the ministry, none of the standard was addressed 100%. However, better implementation were seen on standard related to establishes system for records and documents management, laboratory information and supplies management systems, and incident handling and reporting system. Low internal quality control (IQC) and EQA) and have no availing back up equipment. Half of public hospitals laboratories were not fully engaged in mobilization of blood donation in community awareness programmed. More than half of the public hospitals laboratories had no appropriate cold chain management system for blood product and blood until used by prescribers. Better implementation of LQM was seen in specialized compressive hospital as compared to general and primary hospitals.