Assessors' attitudes toward and experiences of national quality standards: A qualitative study in Iran

Abstract

To establish a national accreditation system for medical laboratories, Iran has set national standards based on the international standard ISO 15189. Central to the accreditation process are the technical assessors. Their attitude in this regard and their experiences should be identified. This study aims to explore assessors' attitudes toward national laboratory accreditation and their experiences of assessment process in order to identify current gaps and suggest required interventions to solve them. A qualitative study using an open-ended questionnaire was employed. A total of 150 assessors working in the General Directorate of Laboratory Affairs participated in the study. While almost all Iranian laboratory accreditation assessors were generally supportive about the necessity of laboratory accreditation and cited benefits of this process, they pointed to improvement areas including developing assessor selection and appraisal criteria, continuous training, taking into consideration the heterogeneity of laboratories throughout the country, participation of professional associations and adopting measures to increase laboratories' involvement. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg