CAP TODAY Pathology/Laboratory Medicine/Laboratory Management
Sept. 3, 2015—Upcoming webinars offered by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute will focus on helping laboratory professionals develop their own individualized quality control plans and provide them with new ways to deal with antimicrobial susceptibility testing challenges.
A Sept. 15 webinar, “Developing Your Laboratory’s IQCP for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing,” will be presented by Susan E. Sharp, PhD, ABMM, FAAM, director of the regional microbiology and molecular infectious diseases laboratories at Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Ore., and Linda C. Bruno, MT(ASCP), director of the microbiology and molecular pathology labs at ACL Laboratories in Rosemont, Ill. They will focus on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-mandated IQCP as well as the CAP requirements for IQCP and how to develop an IQCP for AST.
On Oct. 6, the CLSI will partner with the CAP to present “Antimicrobial Susceptibility Challenges.” This webinar will be led by Janet A. Hindler, MCLS, MT(ASCP), senior specialist, clinical microbiology at the University of California, Los Angeles Health System, and Audrey N. Schuetz, MD, MPH, D(ABMM), interim director of the clinical microbiology laboratory at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. This webinar will cover appropriate agents to report on individual species when isolated from select body sites. There will also be information presented about practical strategies for identifying, confirming, and reporting results for multidrug-resistant
bacteria.
Lastly, the CLSI is offering a webinar entitled “Finding Value in Your AST IQCP: Improving Accuracy and Timeliness of AST Reports” on Nov. 19. This webinar will focus on which AST results should be confirmed before reporting and will cover processes that can be implemented to identify the most common AST reporting errors. Beth Prouse, MS, MT(ASCP), clinical microbiologist at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Md., and Janet Hindler will present on these topics and describe ways to improve AST report turnaround time.