Food, water and environmental laboratories play a vital role in protecting the public’s health by helping to ensure that food is safe to consume, waters are safe to drink and that environmental and recreational waters do not make people ill.
Proficiency testing or external quality assessment provides laboratories with an independent external assessment of their performance. Regular participation in proficiency testing schemes is an important part of laboratories quality procedures and helps to ensure that the results of their tests are accurate.
Samples of known but undisclosed content are introduced into a laboratory’s routine testing procedure:
The benefits of taking part in PT are:
- provides staff with an insight into their laboratory’s performance
- provides a comparison of performance with that of other laboratories, nationally and internationally
- improves the standard of examinations
- identifies areas where there may be problems
- demonstrates to clients, colleagues and accreditation bodies that there is a commitment to quality
- educates staff, providing a better understanding of the impact of incorrect results
Why laboratories take part in PT:
- To demonstrate competence as part of accreditation requirement – ISO/IEC 17025:2005 - General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories
- Helps to provide assurance of the results obtained provided they are treated and processed the same as other samples
- Helps improve laboratory processes and understanding of regulation/legislation
- To remain up to date with new and emerging organisms - educational
- To challenge processes/media/training with difficult or atypical organisms
- To allow for Inter-laboratory comparison of performance
- To support work tendered for as an accredited laboratory
Participants also have the additional advantage of drawing on the full scientific resources of UKHSA.The schemes help you to identify gaps in your processes, highlighting where quality improvements can be made. It also provides an opportunity to improve staffs knowledge and experience with organisms not frequently encountered.
For your investigation repeat samples are provided free of charge and further expertise can be provided by our panel of renowned food and water microbiologists.
The schemes focus on raising awareness of:
- the challenges associated with enumerating or detecting organisms of significant public health concern
- variations in the methods used which can highlight differences in results obtained
- issues and limitations of confirmatory tests carried out on isolates or method used
- updates in local guidelines or polices
Read the general information about how the schemes operate and how to get the most out of PT participation.