The attitude of laboratory personnel towards accreditation

A multiple-choice questionnaire was submitted to medical technologists in t wo medical laboratories, 10 months after the laboratories had obtained an E N 45001 (Beltest) accreditation. The majority of the technologists (85-90%) considered that their workload had been increased by the accreditation pro cess but they did not think that the process had improved the quality of th eir results. The major advantages were: traceability, the fact that the tec hnologists felt more confident about the procedures followed, they also rec eived more responsibility and had a better knowledge of the tests performed . The major disadvantages were the increased paperwork, discrepancies betwe en written procedures and the same procedures in practice, the fact that mo re attention was paid to the formalities rather than to the quality of the results and that the accreditation process decreased the technologists' ada ptability. A small majority of the technologists prefered working in an acc redited laboratory rather than in a non-accredited one.