The Ethical Aspects of Clinical Laboratory Management

The working of the clinical laboratory is based on international and national guidelines; being an integral part of the health –care setting. Clinical laboratory have evolved during the recent times significantly due to innovations, new diagnostic techniques, reduction in occurrence of human errors, automation, elevated efficiency and enhanced productivity. These developments have directly facilitated the advantages to stakeholders such as patients, clinicians, society etc. It is also essential to continuously contemplate, monitor and consider ethical aspects and dilemmas and resolve them on the basis of guidelines and principles of ethics evolved over the past. Ethics refers the set of moral standards of human behavior and the governance thereof. Whereas bioethics deals with the ethical issues generated due to the development of biological sciences. Medical ethics is concerned with the moral issues of medical practice. These are both international and national guidelines which the pivotal guidance in ethical matters even in matters related to clinical laboratory. There are possibilities of ethical challenges during the quality management of the clinical laboratory which may occur in the pre-analytical phase, analytical phase or post-analytical phase. The underlying principles of ethics, bioethics or medical practice is to adhere by the behavior or course of action that is right; both in terms of ethics and legal law. However, there are certain best practices pertaining to ethics which are outlined and ideally should be followed by every clinical laboratories. The matters of ethics applies to the working of the clinical laboratory, personnels, working, patients and relatives visiting and clinicians. In the contemporary times, these ethical aspects have to be stringently applied in matters of clinical laboratory only then it can meet the global requirements of standardization, quality management and accreditation procedures of clinical laboratories.