Environmental Health Situation of Public and Private Medical Diagnostic Laboratories in Kerman, 2014

Failure to comply with environmental health regulations can seriously affected the performance of the medical laboratory. The objective of this study was to evaluate the environmental health standards in medical diagnostic laboratories in Kerman, Iran.
This was a cross-sectional study conducted in Kerman, 2014. In this study we evaluated 21 laboratories from private sector and 4 laboratories from public (governmental) sector. Data were collected through a questionnaire with 25 questions in various fields of environmental health. Collected data were analyzed with SPSS 19 software and using descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U nonparametric test.
The mean and standard deviation of scores related to the compliance with environmental health standards in all studied laboratories was 21±4.4, from maximum score of 25. Statistically significant difference was observed between public (governmental) and private laboratories scores (P = 0.02). About two-thirds (64%) of the all surveyed laboratories and more than three quarters (76.2%) of the private laboratories had desirable environmental health situation, but no governmental laboratory found that had fully good environmental health situation.
Our results showed that there is not high rate of compliance with the environmental health standards in Kerman medical diagnostic laboratories and we need to improve management practices and careful planning as well as continuous monitoring in the public and private laboratories.