To further strengthen the basis of quality diagnosis in China, a follow-up laboratory training was delivered through the China 2 project from 25 to 27 February at the Peking Union Hospital. 11 technicians from the seven new centres that report to Beijing (Xinjiang, Shanxi, Haerbin, Tianjin, Shandong, Beijing children’s hospital and Wuhan) participated in this training.

The training was given by Dr Angus McCraw from the Royal Free Hospital, UK, and was divided into two parts; every morning a lecture was followed by afternoon practice sessions and clinical case discussions. The laboratory activities were supported by commercial companies with their equipment and product specialists. Sysmex and Instrumentation Laboratories offered their support and the participants were also introduced to the Stago equipment based in the Haemostasis and Thrombosis unit in Peking Union hospital run by Mr Phan, who had kindly prepared all the samples used in the workshop.

One topic that raised many discussions was quality control and the current External Quality Assurance (EQA) programme being realised in association with Prof Alok Srivastava from the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India.

Dr McCraw analysed in details the EQA results of the four rounds realised so far. The reasons why some of the results were without consensus were discussed. The participants will now re-examine their practices in more detail and increase their internal quality control procedures to more than once per day.  The same training programme will be performed in June to train the hospitals in the southern part of China.