Elements and Performance Criteria

RANGE STATEMENT
The range statement relates to the unit of competency as a whole. It allows for different work environments and situations that may affect performance. Bold italicised wording, if used in the performance criteria, is detailed below. Essential operating conditions that may be present with training and assessment (depending on the work situation, needs of the candidate, accessibility of the item, and local industry and regional contexts) may also be included.
Codes of practice
Where reference is made to industry codes of practice, and/or Australian/international standards, it is expected the latest version will be used
Information sources
Information sources may include:
manuals of enterprise standard instructions
hardware manuals
software manuals
training materials to orient software to enterprise needs
on-screen instructions embedded in the software
Software packages
Software packages may include:
word processing
spreadsheets
databases
graphical and statistical analysis
laboratory information systems
Occupational health and safety (OHS) and environmental management requirements
OHS and environmental management requirements:
all operations must comply with enterprise OHS and environmental management requirements, which may be imposed through state/territory or federal legislation - these requirements must not be compromised at any time
all operations assume the potentially hazardous nature of samples and require standard precautions to be applied
where relevant, users should access and apply current industry understanding of infection control issued by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and State and Territory Departments of Health

EVIDENCE GUIDE
The Evidence Guide provides advice on assessment and must be read in conjunction with the performance criteria, required skills and knowledge, range statement and the Assessment Guidelines for the Training Package.

Overview of assessment

Critical aspects for assessment and evidence required to demonstrate competency in this unit
Assessors should ensure that candidates can:
select the most appropriate software package for the task from the suite of software applications available
use routine instruction sets of the software package to complete the task
use software to analyse data such as quality control and instrument performance characteristics
back up electronic storage
use scanning software to protect in-house software and data.

Context of and specific resources for assessment
This unit of competency is to be assessed in the workplace or simulated workplace environment.
This unit of competency may be assessed with:
MSL925001A Analyse data and report results
relevant MSL974000 series units of competency
relevant MSL975000 series units of competency.
Resources may include:
access to a computer network or a personal computer
software packages that include a database package, spreadsheet, statistical analysis and simple graphics output
input and output data.

Method of assessment
The following assessment methods are suggested:
review of analysis tasks linking test results to the generation of meaningful reports by the candidate
review of simple statistical and/or graphical analysis of quality control data completed by the candidate
oral and written exercises in preparation for keyboard activities.
In all cases, practical assessment should be supported by questions to assess underpinning knowledge and those aspects of competency which are difficult to assess directly.
Where applicable, reasonable adjustment must be made to work environments and training situations to accommodate ethnicity, age, gender, demographics and disability.
Access must be provided to appropriate learning and/or assessment support when required.
The language, literacy and numeracy demands of assessment should not be greater than those required to undertake the unit of competency in a work like environment.

This competency in practice
Industry representatives have provided the case studies below to illustrate the practical application of this unit of competency and to show its relevance in a workplace setting.
Manufacturing
A laboratory technician performs tests on starting materials, such as appearance, identity, melting point, moisture content, trace elements, sulfated ash and assay. The results are entered in a computer database that allows trend analysis to be carried out on the test results for materials from each supplier. As a result, the technician may recognise when a supplier is experiencing potential problems with their production process. The technician would then notify the supervisor and/or supplier that there is a high probability that future supplies may be out of specification and that constant monitoring of starting materials will be required.
Biomedical
An important task of the technical officer in a pathology laboratory is to perform statistical analysis for quality control purposes. The software package provides for the input of data, analysis of mean value and variance as well as graphical reporting. The technical officer uses a dedicated software package or a package within the customised pathology data management system in order to assess the validity of the results produced from the analytical instrument.
Food processing
A technical officer is required to perform a nutrient analysis of a food product, the results of which will be displayed on the food container. The output from the nutrient analysis is fed into a software program that calculates the levels of these components 'per portion' and 'per 100g' and displays the information in the correct tabular format. The software package is designed so that the technical officer can input new data or access existing data and manipulate that data to provide a full and accurate nutrient display or report.