Quality assurance for blood glucose monitoring. The balance of feasibility and standards.

Capillary BGM is a test performed by persons with diabetes as well as health care professionals, i.e., nonlaboratory personnel. Although there are specific actions to be taken to enhance the quality of the test results, these recommendations are frequently not followed. Because therapeutic regimens for medication, diet, and exercise may be changed based on the BGM data and because there is a possibility of adverse outcome to a patient with erroneous results, assuring the quality of the data is reasonable. The challenge to nurses is to make what is reasonable also feasible and practical.