With the purpose of highlighting the importance of quality in all laboratory activities, Michael Noble (Professor Emeritus) and his family have created an endowment to the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of British Columbia to support a new Michael A Noble and Family Award for Laboratory Quality to encourage and support Medical Residents and Graduate Students within the UBC Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine to highlight more visible attention on aspects of Quality and Improvement in their academic pursuits. The goal of the endowment is to establish a Prize (the Noble Prize) to reward annual scholastic efforts in the laboratory quality for at least the next 10 years.

Quality Improvement can be interpreted widely and broadly. Quality in this context is not about elegance or values. In this arena it is about meeting requirements performance, activities focused on improved accuracy and precision, error awareness and detection, error correction and prevention. In addition, Quality includes focus on organization structure and needs and staff engagement and satisfaction, and customer (in its broadest sense) satisfaction. Tools commonly used include but are not limited to measurements of accuracy and precision, opinion and other surveys, performance assessment.

The Noble Award is to reward students and residents who bring attention to aspects of Quality in their studies through projects and presentations.

The award will be earned through competition among UBC Graduate Students and UBC Medical Residents in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine with one award for each group. Projects and topics can be either stand-alone or can be components of a larger activity.

Presentations can oral or can be made through poster or oral presentation during either the annual Departmental Pathology Day or at the POLQM Laboratory Quality Conference. Presentations will be evaluated by teams including members of the department and observers.

No restrictions or limitations on the style or structure of the presentation, beyond those required by the meeting are required for the competition.

The decision by assessment team with respect to quality, value and merit will be based upon the project’s relevance to quality improvement.

The decision of the committee will be final.

Each award will be presented to the lead student or resident on the project. The value of each award for 2023 is $1500. The winners will be announced and the prize will be presented to the resident/student during the respective meetings. Authors shall submit their interest of participating in the competition at least 6 weeks before the Pathology Day or the Quality Conference, to ensure that the evaluation team is aware. Notification forms will be available in the Departmental Office. A third award will be also provided to the student achieving the highest mark in the UBC Certificate Course in Laboratory Quality Management.