Abstract
The concept of quality is placed both within a historical as well as philosophical light. It is argued that nowadays general and laboratory medicine is a logical extension of economical and social concepts which stem from the beginning of the twentieth century. However, it seems that medicine cannot be explained based entirely upon these concepts. The medical field has a variety of definitions of quality: all depending on the person and/or institution posing the questions. The quality concept sometimes concerns an individual and sometimes a group of individuals. The quality definition and indicator scores are then different. This quantified quality can also be looked upon from an eastern (i.e. Japanese, Chinese, ancient Greece) perspective. The ideal world, framed within a cyclic evaluation between well-defined static situations, does not relate easily with the individualized (quantified quality) western medical world. Nevertheless, we are in search of a quality concept that balances the western industrial model of medicine and the eastern, philosophical approach.
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Presented at the European Conference on Quality in the Spotlight in Medical Laboratories, 7–9 October 2001, Antwerp, Belgium
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Triadou, P. Quality and quantity within medicine. Accred Qual Assur 7, 507–511 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00769-002-0540-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00769-002-0540-5