A medical assistant turns on the point-of-care glucose meter at the start of the morning clinic. The meter prompts for quality control. What is the BEST FIRST action before testing any patient samples?
- ATest a fingerstick on the medical assistant as a quick comparator against a colleague's meter, since staff samples confirm the meter is working before a real patient is drawn.
- BRun the low and high level liquid control solutions, confirm the results fall within the printed ranges on the control vial, and record the lot, expiry, and result in the QC log. Correct
- CSkip QC because the meter passed its electronic self-test on power-up and the strips in use are from the same lot as yesterday's successful patient run.
- DRecalibrate the meter by re-entering the test strip code, then test the next patient without any liquid controls because code entry replaces the daily QC run.
Why A is wrong: Tempting because a staff fingerstick feels like a check, but a person's true glucose value is unknown, so it cannot verify the meter is in calibration and is not an acceptable substitute for documented liquid controls.
Why B is correct: Daily QC with both levels of liquid controls within the manufacturer's printed ranges, documented with lot and expiry, is the standard precondition before patient glucose testing on a point-of-care meter.
Why C is wrong: Tempting because an electronic check looks like validation, but the on-board self-test does not measure analyte performance and yesterday's patient result is not a substitute for today's documented liquid control run.
Why D is wrong: Tempting because code entry feels like calibration, but entering the strip lot code only aligns the meter to the strip batch and does not verify performance against known low and high glucose targets.