Appropriate laboratory use of microbiological testing for quality control and nosocomial infection control

Useful information from clinical microbiological tests is required for clinical diagnosis and treatment of infectious disease, whereas concern about the quality of information is still low. To provide reliable information in clinical microbiological testing, it is necessary to control the quality of clinical specimens, because of its random character. Through effective use of laboratory testing database, it will be possible to shift away our vague management of pre-analytic phase of quality control so far to its established system based on objective evaluation. During the past 4 years, after the introduction of microbiological tests and information system in our hospital, the characteristics of sputum have become worse contrary to our expectations. This suggests that quality control needs successive improvements, even in service departments such as clinical laboratories. Application of laboratory testing database to nosocomial infection control is considered to be a performance of post-analytic phase of quality control from the viewpoint of effective use of laboratory data. We presented in this paper our practical application of the database to the short-term and long-term control of nosocomial infection.