Which term is commonly used for evaluating current laboratory processes to determine effectiveness and drive improvements?

• A. Quality assessment
• B. Quality assurance
• C. Quality control
• D. Quality systems

Answer: (B)

Quality assurance focuses on ensuring that laboratory processes are designed and functioning properly to produce reliable results. It takes a proactive, system-wide view—evaluating current workflows, auditing practices, maintaining documentation, training staff, and implementing corrective actions to continually improve quality. This makes it the best fit for describing how a lab assesses its processes to determine effectiveness and drive improvements.

Quality control, by contrast, is about the immediate testing and inspection steps that catch errors in analytical results. Quality assessment can refer to evaluating performance or testing proficiency, but QA encompasses the broader program of evaluating and improving processes across the lab. Quality systems provide the overarching framework within which QA operates.