DHA Laboratory cheat sheet

Licensure is a mandatory credential granted by a government authority; certification is a voluntary credential granted by a professional body.

Scope of practice statutes define which tasks each licensed cadre may legally perform; delegation outside scope requires a written order and supervision.

License renewal cycles in the UAE are typically annual; practising on an expired licence is an offence subject to fine and suspension.

Primary-source verification of qualifications (direct from the issuing institution or a recognised data bank) is a prerequisite for professional licensure.

Good standing / verification of licensure letters confirm that no prior licence is under investigation, suspension, or revocation.

Facility licensure and professional licensure are separate processes: the facility licence authorises the premises and services; individual licences authorise practitioners.

A licence is tied to a specific employer and facility; changing employer usually requires a new licence or an amendment to the existing one.

Continuing professional development hours are a standard condition of renewal; shortfalls block renewal until remediated.

Third-party administrator (TPA) processes claims and prior authorisations on behalf of an insurer; the insurer retains the financial risk.

Pre-authorisation is approval obtained before a service is rendered; retrospective approval is sought after the fact and may be denied.

Co-payment is a fixed amount paid by the member per service; co-insurance is a percentage split of the cost between member and insurer.

Deductible is the member-paid amount before insurer liability begins; maximum out-of-pocket caps the member's annual exposure.

Exclusions are services not covered by the policy; performing an excluded service without documented consent shifts cost to the patient or facility.

Claim rejection categories include eligibility, coverage, coding, medical-necessity, and documentation errors; each is appealed through a defined route.

Permits are required for specific activities such as controlled-drug handling, radiation equipment, and clinical waste transport, separate from the facility licence.

Insurance fraud indicators include unbilled services, upcoding, duplicate claims, and services rendered to deceased or ineligible members.

Accreditation of a training programme is granted by a recognised body and is distinct from institutional licensure.

Competency-based curricula define observable outcomes (knowledge, skills, attitudes) rather than hours of instruction.

Miller's pyramid: knows → knows how → shows how → does; assessment method must match the level being tested.

Formative assessment provides feedback during learning; summative assessment certifies competence at the end of a period.

Workplace-based assessment tools include direct observation (DOPS), case-based discussion, and multi-source feedback.

Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) link competencies to units of real clinical work and require supervision-level decisions.

Constructive alignment requires learning objectives, teaching activities, and assessment to address the same outcomes.

Assessment validity is the degree to which a tool measures the intended construct; reliability is the consistency of scores across occasions and raters.

Research ethics approval must precede data collection; amendments to an approved protocol require re-approval before implementation.

Informed consent requires capacity, disclosure, comprehension, and voluntariness; consent for minors requires assent plus guardian permission.

Declaration of Helsinki governs human-subject research; the Belmont principles are respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.

Research misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism; honest error is not misconduct.

Randomisation reduces selection bias; blinding reduces measurement and detection bias; allocation concealment prevents foreknowledge of assignment.

Sample size is driven by effect size, variance, significance level (alpha), and power (1 − beta); power is conventionally set at 0.80 or higher.

Confidentiality of identifiable data requires de-identification, secure storage, and defined retention periods.

Conflict-of-interest disclosure is mandatory at proposal, publication, and presentation stages.

Incidence counts new cases per population at risk per unit time; prevalence counts all existing cases at a point or over a period.

Crude rates are unadjusted; age-standardised rates allow comparison across populations with different age structures.

Sensitivity = true positives / (true positives + false negatives); specificity = true negatives / (true negatives + false positives).

Positive predictive value depends on prevalence; a test with high sensitivity and specificity can still have low PPV in a low-prevalence population.

Relative risk is used in cohort studies; odds ratio approximates relative risk in case-control studies and when the outcome is rare.

Herd immunity threshold is approximated by 1 − 1/R0; higher R0 requires a higher proportion immune to interrupt transmission.

Notifiable disease surveillance requires reporting to the public health authority within a defined timeframe.

Screening programmes require a detectable preclinical phase, an acceptable test, effective early treatment, and adequate follow-up capacity.

Live attenuated vaccines are generally contraindicated in pregnancy and severe immunosuppression; inactivated vaccines are preferred in these groups.

Cold chain: most vaccines are stored at 2–8 °C; frozen storage is reserved for specified products and freeze-sensitive vaccines must never be frozen.

Vaccine vial monitor (VVM) colour change indicates cumulative heat exposure; a VVM at discard stage means the vial must be discarded.

Anaphylaxis management requires adrenaline (epinephrine) intramuscularly as first-line treatment, with airway, breathing, and circulation support.

Primary immunisation series establishes immunity; booster doses restore waning antibody titres and sustain population protection.

Levels of prevention: primordial (risk-factor avoidance), primary (pre-disease), secondary (early detection), tertiary (disability limitation).

Cold chain breach handling requires quarantine of affected stock, temperature-log review, and a documented stability decision before use.

Adverse events following immunisation are classified as vaccine product-related, immunisation error-related, anxiety-related, or coincidental.

Unlicensed practice is enforceable by suspension, fine, or prohibition orders issued by the regulator.

Facility licensing specifies bed capacity, service scope, and staffing ratios; exceeding licensed scope is a compliance violation.

Credentialing verifies education, licensure, and experience before granting clinical privileges within a facility.

Clinical privileges are facility-specific and time-limited; they are not equivalent to a professional licence.

Coding accuracy drives reimbursement; unbundling and upcoding are common audit findings and fraud indicators.

Emergency care is generally exempt from prior authorisation in insurance contracts; retrospective notification is then required.

Permit conditions are activity-specific and time-limited; operating after permit expiry is a licensing breach even if the facility licence is valid.

Medical necessity documentation must link diagnosis, service, and clinical rationale for the claim to be payable.

Bloom's taxonomy orders cognitive objectives from recall through evaluation and creation.

Feedback should be specific, timely, and behaviour-focused to be effective in clinical learning.

Simulation-based training provides deliberate practice with structured debriefing and no patient risk.

Programme evaluation models (e.g., Kirkpatrick levels) assess reaction, learning, behaviour, and results.

A control group isolates the effect of the intervention from confounding and natural history.

Intention-to-treat analysis preserves randomisation benefits; per-protocol analysis can introduce bias.

Peer review and editorial oversight are safeguards against publication of flawed or fraudulent research.

Data monitoring committees review safety and efficacy in trials and may recommend early stopping.

Outbreak investigation steps: verify diagnosis, confirm the outbreak, define cases, describe time/place/person, generate hypotheses, test, control.

Contact tracing identifies exposed persons and interrupts onward transmission through quarantine or prophylaxis.

Case fatality rate = deaths from the disease / diagnosed cases of that disease over the period.

Screening test harms include false positives (anxiety, unnecessary procedures) and false negatives (false reassurance, delayed diagnosis).

Vaccine efficacy = (attack rate in unvaccinated − attack rate in vaccinated) / attack rate in unvaccinated × 100%.

Catch-up immunisation schedules are used when doses are missed; they follow age-appropriate rules rather than restarting the series.

Live vaccines given on the same day are acceptable; otherwise they require a minimum interval of about 4 weeks.

Surveillance of adverse events after immunisation is essential to maintaining public confidence and detecting rare signals.