American Foundation for Donation & Transplantation

Quality Assurance in the HLA Laboratory

A QA manual geared for HLA laboratories is now available for purchase from The American Foundation for Donation & Transplantation (AFDT). This manual is intended to answer your questions about the various components of a QA program. It also contains an actual prototype QA program. The program is supplied on diskette as well as hard copy so that you can easily modify it to meet the needs of your individual laboratory.

Section 1: Overview of a Quality Assurance Program

Section 2: Prototype for QA Program - a general QA program that each lab should have available in the lab. It defines indicators of quality, how each is to be monitored and acceptable thresholds for compliance.

Section 3: Prototype for QA Report

Section 4: Ideas for making a user-friendly Procedure Manual

Section 5: Laboratory Policies

Section 6: QA Forms

Section 7: Employee Competence

• Employee Orientation
• Training Manual
• Training for New Methodology
• Documentation of Competence

Section 8: Other Risk Management Issues

This section will briefly outline the other components of the Risk Management Program. Most of these issues will deal with safety. The safety component of the Risk Management Program is made up of General Laboratory Safety, a Chemical Hygiene Plan, and a Hazardous Materials Program. Other areas that may fall under Risk Management are the Accident and Incident Procedures, Continuing Education, Lab Inspection Policies, and a schedule for Risk Management and QA meetings.