The philosophy of Quality Analytical Laboratories is to provide the very best analytical services to our customers by offering the most complete array of services available to our customers while maintaining an extensive quality assurance program, a well-trained staff, and state of the art instrumentation.
The Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) programs at QAL are designed to assess and minimize errors and to ensure accuracy of results in all phases of the laboratory analysis. A QA/QC officer heads the programs and ensures the proper receipt and handling of samples, the choice of reference methods, and the reliability of performance procedures designed to generate analytical data of the highest quality.
Ten basic premises of quality assurance:
- Everyone must be actively involved with quality every day. Quality Assurance is not something special done periodically, but must be done every day on every sample.
- Do not make assumptions – check everything.
- You are responsible for what you do (not management, not head office, not your supervisor, not senior management).
- Keep records. (You really will not remember, and even if you do, you will have moved.) All relevant quality data and checks must be recorded.
- Quality is not something extra or something nice; it is the foundation of everything we do.
- Bad data is worse than no data.
- Nothing is perfect. Be aware of the limits, i.e., how good or bad are the reagents, methods, data, etc. Do not keep to yourself; make everyone else aware of the limits as well.
- Opinions do not count here – where are the facts?
- Quality problems are not fate. They have causes and can be corrected.
- Do you have all the necessary documentation to be able to repeat the test?