PROFICIENCY TESTING & INTERLABORATORY COMPARISONS

As it is stated in TS EN ISO/IEC 17025 standard and relevant ILAC and EA guidelines Proficiency Testing (PT) and Interlaboratory Comparisons are very important tools concerning the quality assurance of the testing results.

Used appropriately, they can bring significant benefits to laboratories. The primary aim of PT is to provide the infrastructure for a laboratory to monitor and improve the quality of its routine measurements. PT can not implement improvements itself - the information generated is used by the laboratory to suggest and implement improvements. PT is the only quality measure which is specifically concerned with a laboratory’s outputs. Using the results from PT is therefore of particular value to a laboratory to identify any problems with other aspects of its quality system, e.g., input measures such as staff training and method validation.