ADLM grant recipient leads further trainings in Mongolia
Khulan Purevdorj, MSc, MD
In early 2024, Khulan Purevdorj, MSc, MD, a clinical pathologist and head of the laboratory department at the Fourth Hospital in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, received a grant from the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (ADLM, formerly AACC) to conduct a workshop for fellow pathologists in Mongolia. The grant gave her and her colleagues the opportunity to advance quality control implementation in the country and provide further training opportunities for pathologists.
How it started — with ADLM and MAHL’s 2023 collaboration
Purevdorj’s workshop never would have happened if not for ADLM’s 2023 workshop on “Adding value to patient care using quality control.” The workshop was conducted in partnership with the Mongolian Association of Health Laboratorians (MAHL). Purevdorj was inspired by the workshop to become more involved with her local laboratory medicine community, so when she heard about ADLM’s distance learning project, she jumped on board.
ADLM’s distance learning project
The distance learning certificate program gave 110 laboratory medicine professionals from various countries around the world a chance to take an online certificate course on practical approaches to quality control. Participants who had finished the program by August 2024 went on to attend a train-the-trainers program and had a chance to submit a grant proposal to run their own workshop on quality control.
Purevdorj and her colleagues completed the program and were among the grant recipients.
A first-of-its-kind event
The ADLM grant that Purevdorj received ended up supporting a 2024 workshop for Mongolian pathologists titled “Practical approaches in quality control in the clinical laboratory.” She collaborated with her colleagues and professors to hold the event. This workshop, Purevdorj explained “was the first foreign-funded event in laboratory medicine in Mongolia, which was a significant achievement.” The 200+ clinical pathologists working today in Mongolia are always on the lookout for training opportunities, and this grant provided what they needed.
The impact of ADLM’s grant
These workshops had a profound impact on both Purevdorj and laboratory science in Mongolia. Clinical pathologists, Purevdorj added, left the 2023 ADLM/MAHL workshop and her 2024 workshop with a deeper interest in internal quality control improvement and are beginning to implement some of the recommendations in the training. Purevdorj points out that they are using the “simple steps” offered by the trainers.
“In my laboratory,” she explains, “we are using only the mean volume of QC. [And] after the training, we are observing the quality control daily result and adjusting it according to training. It is a part of implementing the lesson.” She adds that since the 2024 workshop, "Hospitals are now using more advanced statistical methods like Z-scores and CUSUM."
And the impacts do not stop here. Purevdorj and her team are planning two other training workshops for Mongolian pathologists in 2025 — one in March, and the other in September. Her team’s workshops in 2025 will focus more on practical examples of the material that’s presented.
Through this initiative, Purevdorj was able to foster strong collaboration with her colleagues and professors to successfully carry out the 2024 workshop and help improve lab quality in the country. She was happy to be part of these activities and have the chance to take advantage of what the course and grant had to offer.
The ADLM/MAHL workshop was conducted as a part of the Global Lab Quality Initiative funded by the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation. Any society interested in partnering on a similar workshop, please contact [email protected].