Marith van Schrojenstein Lantman

Evaluating Staff Competence using EQA

External Quality Assessment is traditionally used to evaluate the performance of laboratories and measurement systems, but the people performing the measurements are also an important part of that system. In many laboratory settings, differences between staff members are not always easy to see from standard EQA reports, even though they may influence the reliability and consistency of results. This presentation explores how EQA data can be used to evaluate staff competence in a clear and constructive way. By grouping results by analyst or staff cluster, laboratories may gain insight into individual performance, variation between staff members, and changes over time. This can help identify where additional training, procedural clarification, or follow-up may be useful. The aim is not to judge individual analysts, but to provide laboratories with practical information to better understand and improve the quality of their work. In this way, EQA can become not only a tool for external comparison, but also a tool for internal learning and quality improvement.