The assessment of interpretation in clinical biochemistry: a personal view

In many laboratories, clinical biochemists add interpretative comments to laboratory reports. There is, however, little evidence base to support this activity. Interpretative comments attached to reports are quite complex, usually consisting of several components that may suggest possible diagnoses and additional tests, Every comment is different, and assessment of interpretation is difficult. We illustrate different approaches which can be used: assessing whole comments or comment components or key phrases; and using independent assessors or a pooled panel of experts. No approach has yet been optimized: assessment is a guide to and not a definition of exact solutions. Although External Quality Assurance Schemes examining interpretation provide information to individual participants on how their comments compare with others, a more important role of these Schemes is to enable us to pool knowledge, and their primary purpose is educational.