Meeting the Needs

It is remarkable that 2019 marks 40 years since Philip Crosby wrote his seminal book Quality is Free and his declaration of the Four Absolutes of Quality, the first of which was “Quality is defined as conformance to requirements” by which he meant that if the customer has certain requirements and expectations, such as defect free and durability, precision, and date of delivery, and all are met, then the product is meeting the customer’s requirements and can be fairly called a Quality product.   Meeting Requirements or Meeting the Needs of the Customer is not a cornerstone of modern quality, it is the cornerstone. 

As we think about meeting needs, it becomes clear that needs go a long way from purely “technical” considerations.  Yes, precision, and timeliness are still critical needs for medical laboratory testing, but so are clinical relevance, and interpretation, and context, and clear language and of course getting the right information to the right person and not infringing of confidentiality.  Satisfaction is essential, but is only the first step.  In our arena, our customers extend to cover health care personnel working with the “patient” as well as their family and friends and contacts and caregivers, and public health and the institutions of health.  It is not that meeting the needs has become more complicated; rather it is that we have become more aware of what people want, need and expect.  

So in November 2019 we are going to bring the discussion to the larger table.  On November 24-26 a conference will be held here in Vancouver BC Canada to look broadly at the theme of Meeting the Needs.

The conference will be an ideal forum for people interested in Quality in the Medical Laboratory field including technologists, Quality specialists, students, trainees, administrators, and pathologists from BC, across Canada and even beyond.

As we gear up you will see increasing information at https://polqm.med.ubc.ca/

This would be a good time to start thinking about your own poster presentations.

More to come!!!