Bookmarkers beware: Bookmarks to pages other than the home page may not work after we change our server in April Editor's Choice | This Week in BMJ | Press releases BMJ No 7131 Volume 316 News Saturday 21 February 1998 Cervical screening laboratories should be accredited Guidance on standards and a monitoring procedure for cervical testing laboratories in Britain have been introduced to help to eradicate errors in testing procedures. Health Services Accreditation, an NHS body set up in 1997 to improve quality of care by monitoring clinical and organisational standards, has announced a series of safety and quality control indicators for cervical cytology services. There will be detailed guidance for laboratories on how each standard can be achieved, backed by a monitoring procedure to report on each laboratory's performance. The guidance includes standards for the training and competence of screeners, definitions of smear inadequacy, rapid rescreening measures, failsafe recall systems, and clinical audit of performance and workloads to ensure consistency of performance. In response to public concerns about the screening programme the chief medical officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, announced last year that in future all laboratories should undergo a process of accreditation to monitor performance and raise standards - the first service for which accreditation is a requirement. The process and guidance have been developed by Mr Martin Savage, director of accreditation, and Dr Mark Boxer, consultant histopathologist at Hastings and Rother NHS Trust. Dr Boxer said that materials of the health services accreditation process "address the details of clinical practice where error and failure may otherwise lurk undetected. They incorporate tried and tested quality controls which are available, do work, and should be systematically applied." This programme will be the only accreditation process in which results will be made available to the public, and the results of the monitoring process will be available on the internet. The director of Health Services Accreditation, Mr Andrew Corbett-Nolan, said: "We hope our work will contribute to restoring women's confidence in the cervical screening programme." Linda Beecham, BMJ Home | Current issue | Past issues | Classified ads | Career Focus | Feedback Collections | About this site | About the BMJ | BMA | Medline