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Quality control is essential in microbiology to ensure accurate results and identify problems. Microbiologists work in hospitals, industry, and research to identify microorganisms and prevent contamination. Training, documentation, and equipment maintenance are crucial for quality control. Regulatory bodies audit microbiology laboratories to ensure compliance.
To monitor the quality of work performed in a laboratory, certain systems must be in place. A microbiology laboratory analyzes samples and can also verify that industrial or scientific processes are working properly. Quality control in microbiology therefore uses documentation to record what happens during a process and to pinpoint problems affecting these processes.
Hospitals, industry and research are fields in which microbiologists are active. To get the most accurate results possible, he has to follow some rules. These rules ensure that materials are fit for purpose, analysts are trained correctly, and procedures are followed correctly. This way you can reduce errors and identify the source of a problem.
Microbiologists identify microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, for living. The importance of this depends on the field in which they work. Food safety is one example. Food manufacturers may need a microbiology laboratory to check for dangerous microbes in food.
Pharmaceutical companies make drugs for use on humans or animals. If the product is contaminated with microbes, this can have adverse effects on the patient. Contamination is especially dangerous if the product is an injectable drug, where microbes can be introduced directly into the body.
Hospital microbiologists test samples from sick patients. If they can find a microbe that is causing disease, doctors can treat the patient effectively. Research microbiologists analyze microbes for scientific purposes, and their findings may be of public health or future research significance.
Correctly identifying a microbe present in a given area is the goal of any microbiologist. Once the microbe has been identified, a microbiologist may also need to trace the source of the contamination and remove the problem. He may also need to recommend the correct method to fix the problem and prevent it from happening in the future.
Central to these responsibilities is the accurate identification of the microbe involved. Microbiology tests are easily contaminated by other irrelevant microbes, which makes the whole test inaccurate and all future actions useless. Quality control in microbiology is therefore extremely important for the test to be useful.
Laboratory analysts must know the right way to perform tasks. To learn them, they can go through training procedures, which set out in writing the best way to perform the tasks. Each procedure is the same for each analyst. Part of quality control in microbiology is keeping training records to demonstrate that an analyst knew how to perform the task correctly.
Hence, an analyst must follow the rules for any particular test that he performs on samples. These rules prevent contamination of the test and ensure that if relevant microbes are present in the sample, the test will identify them. A typical test procedure, which is called a standard operating procedure (SOP) in some fields, explains how to handle the sample, how to use the equipment, and at what temperatures and times a sample is incubated. All stages of the test must also be recorded in detail by the analyst.
The equipment in the laboratory must also do its job properly. Quality control in microbiology can also extend to equipment. Analysts and engineers write down if the equipment works and take it out of service if it doesn’t.
In an industry like pharmaceuticals, the term quality control can also refer to an entire department. People who work in the quality control (QC) department check products and raw materials for contamination. They also check the parts of the factory involved in making the product for possible sources of contamination.
If a microbiologist detects contamination in a sample, they can consult quality documentation to ensure that nothing went wrong or was done incorrectly in the analysis process. If this documentation is not present, an analyst cannot rule out errors as the cause of the contamination. Quality control in microbiology is therefore a method of ensuring that the results are valid and actionable. All the rules also provide analysts with good procedures to follow so they can do the job with a high quality.
Quality control in a microbiology laboratory can be audited by external regulatory bodies. The United States Food and Drug Agency is one such organization that checks the documentation of many companies such as those that manufacture pharmaceutical products. Each country generally has its own regulatory bodies for laboratories operating in various fields.
