TABLE 3.

Capstone project topic areas, Zambia, 2016–2018.^†

Quality management subject area	Number of projects conducted	Examples of project progress‡
Management review	1	Management reviews are now being conducted
Corrective action	3	Improved follow-up of non-conformities to closure from 58% to 83% of events
Addressing pre-analytical causes of error	5	40% reduction in the incidence rate of pre-analytical errors; decrease in the specimen rejection rate
Customer satisfaction	2	Increase in the customer satisfaction rate from 67% to 81%
Analytic phase testing processes, laboratory efficiency	4	Improvement of turnaround time in GeneXpert testing by 44%
Equipment management	2	Creation of a comprehensive equipment management system service schedule and contracts
External quality control processes	1	Monitoring system developed for external quality assessment performance across all tests
Documents and records system	7	Quality manuals and standard operating procedures developed
Personnel management	1	Increase of 35% in the documentation of personnel details, development and implementation of an objective competency evaluation programme
Stock management	1	Development and utilisation of a stock card system
Post-analytical phase processes	4	Improvement of the quality of laboratory report for clinicians, development of new systems for report collection

^†, 31 projects were completed at 16 laboratories between 2016–2018.

^‡, These are examples from individual laboratories.