Quality Officer:

1. Design a schedule in which the complete quality management system is audited in one year. Start by choosing an approach to auditing: will vertical audits be performed in which similar elements in multiple examinations are audited (for example: auditing internal quality control procedures in all the examinations), or will horizontal audits be performed in which one examination procedure is audited by checking all the steps from sample collection to Result Reporting? An option is to focus the audits on quality system essentials. There are 12 quality system essentials, so you can schedule one audit per month; each audit focusses on another quality system essential.
2. Based on the approach chosen, divide the quality management system into pieces so that audits with a logical scope can be planned. The organization and management of the laboratory and the quality management system is often audited in a "System Audit", that does not include any examination procedures but is still bigger than audits of specific examination procedures.
3. Make a workable planning. In the right-hand column a template for an audit plan is provided. Assign specific Internal Auditors to perform each audit. An example year planning is also provided to give you an idea of how auditing of the quality management system in one year can be planned (this plan consists of 5 somewhat bigger audits (done by at least two auditors each time).
4. Distribute the planning to all the Internal Auditors and discuss the planning in a weekly staff meeting.