Please join us in extending our best wishes to IQMH President, Jeff Sumner, who is retiring on March 31, 2021. Jeff has been leading IQMH since 2017 and has dedicated his career to improving the quality of medical laboratories across the country for many years.

Consultant Technologist – Microbiology (Contract)

The Institute for Quality Management in Healthcare (IQMH) (an affiliate of Accreditation Canada) is a provider of world-class medical laboratory proficiency testing (PT) programs. IQMH is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to increasing medical laboratories' quality infrastructure through its proficiency testing programs. Our clients are composed of national and international players in the medical diagnostic testing sector. IQMH's Centre for Proficiency Testing provides PT programs for medical laboratories in the following disciplines: chemistry, hematology, endocrinology, immunology, transfusion medicine, pathology, cytopathology, genetics, microbiology, and virology disciplines.

Have you been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic?

As frontline healthcare workers with increasing demands in the workplace, attention to mental health is as important now as ever before. Empowering yourself with the tools to maintain a healthy mindset can benefit overall social, emotional, and psychological wellbeing.

As much as we might want to, 2020 has been a year that none of us are likely to forget. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused global social and economic disruption, cancellations and postponements of events, travel restrictions, and lockdowns across the world. Today, the pressure on our Canadian healthcare systems has never been greater with daily case numbers continuing to rise, increasing hospital admissions, and ICU bed occupancy reaching critical capacity levels.

In 2021, the Immunology (IMGY) survey will assess CRP (C-reactive Protein), high sensitivity (hs-CRP), and wide-range (wr)CRP assays as a single analyte (CRP). Previously, the IMGY survey targeted low values of CRP, which were best analyzed by hs-CRP assays. Newer immunoassays can measure a broad analytical range of CRP concentrations, and the number of laboratories replacing hs-CRP assays with full range CRP assays continues to increase. In order to assess the full range of clinically-encountered CRP values, the IMGY survey will now offer a range of CRP concentrations (0.1–120.0 mg/L). Assessments will continue to be made by all-methods’ mean.

The purpose of this bulletin is to remind participants of the changes related to the packaging and shipment process for Coagulation survey material in 2021.

A copy of the Shipment Changes for 2021 Coagulation Surveys was included in the previous September 2020 survey.

In our continual effort to improve our services, the Morphology section of the IQMH Hematology Scientific Committee conducted a review of the Morphology analysis worksheet, and several improvement opportunities were identified.

The following changes have been made to the analysis worksheet to reflect information found in current guidelines and published literature and are also expected to better support the move forward with providing digital images for future surveys.

The IQMH Centre for Proficiency Testing Scientific Committees are composed of physicians, technologists and scientists who provide advice to IQMH regarding the fundamental design of Proficiency Testing surveys and ensure that challenges are clinically relevant, and that appropriate performance evaluation is developed and implemented each year.