- To participate in PTC proficiency testing, please apply at https://portal.ptcanada.org/login
- If you have any questions email us at programadmin@PTCanada.org
- An invoice will be sent to you eight weeks before each round of proficiency testing. This must be paid in advance unless you are a government laboratory with a valid purchase order.
- Once your samples are received, process the sample using your standard procedures and equipment according to the instructions provided. You can view a sample instruction sheet on our website.
- You will receive three reports for each test group. They are as follows:
Preliminary Report
An electronic report that contains all of the evaluation data that will be found in the final report will be emailed to participants within one week of the close of the round. It is intended to provide participants with an indication of their performance so that investigations may commence without unnecessary delay. These reports use the evaluation protocol detailed above but are produced before the detailed data examination is performed. These reports are not an official evaluation and final scores may change throughout the course of data examination by PTC.
Final Proficiency Testing Report:
Within 3 weeks of the deadline for submission of results, PTC issues a Final Proficiency Testing Report that contains both the confidential results of the individual participant’s performance (pdf), an excel file containing the same information, and a Test Group Summary Report described below.
Test Group Summary Report:
A Test Group Summary Report is produced for each quantitative Test Group. Each report contains:
- Summary of evaluation procedure;
- Detailed summary statistics including robust mean, median, standard deviation and number of participants
- Graphical representations of the data including sorted scatter plots, z-score plots and kernel density plots.