Old Acquaintances Not Forgotten

By Dan Scungio, MT(ASCP) SLS

 

 

 

Have you had your annual resolution revolution?  Are you going on a diet?  Are you going to break some bad habit?  Best of luck to you!  If you are in charge of your laboratory’s safety program, I hope you’re making another promise as well.  It’s a new year, so it’s time to make your action plan for lab safety awareness and education for 2011!

Staff safety awareness is essential in order to maintain a strong laboratory safety program.  It will be very difficult to sustain success without presenting regular safety topics to employees and educating them about lab safety policies and procedures.  If the staff sees that management and safety personnel are not staying focused on safety, they are not likely to stay focused either. So pick some topics to discuss and review, even if they are topics you’ve covered before.

There are so many safety topics you may not know where to begin.  At the end of each year you should be doing an evaluation of your safety program.  What were the high points?  The lows?  Have you done an evaluation of the effectiveness of your chemical hygiene plan as required by CAP?  There may be a topic or two there, and staff regularly needs education about that plan.  Look at any safety audits you performed last year.  Do you see any trends or consistent problem areas?  These make great areas of focus when considering your plans for the next year.  Another starting point could simply be your safety policies and procedures.  Which ones haven’t been reviewed or discussed in a year or two?  They should all be reviewed on a rotating basis.    

What if you find you need to re-educate about a topic that’s been covered before?  That’s fine, and that will happen as some subjects need extra emphasis or explanation.  Don’t ever hesitate to repeat a safety topic with staff. There may be new staff in the mix and those who for one reason or another haven’t heard the information before.  There may also be those who heard it loud and clear but simply need to hear it again.  Every year I perform spill training for staff, and the information rarely changes.  It is my job to make sure I change my presentation each year to make it interesting and engaging.  That is not a topic where you want your staff falling asleep or texting during the presentation. 

There are other ways to present topics to staff and raise awareness of specific safety issues.  Last year a group of safety coaches in one of our labs got together and developed a mini safety fair for lab staff.  They created four stations covering the topics of spill clean-up, fire response and emergency codes, PPE, and hand hygiene.   Each station was inter-active and fun.  There was a spinning wheel which had staff defining codes based on our hospital’s code color scheme, and there was prize for those who could guess how many gloves were stuffed into a jar.  There were agar plates showing bacterial growth from cultures taken around the lab (I will NEVER shut off a faucet after washing my hands without using a paper towel again!), and there were pictures comparing the right and wrong way to dress while in the laboratory.  This “safety fair” included a post-test and education contact hours for staff who attended and turned in paperwork.  The fair was well-received and well attended, and it did not take staff much time to participate.  It was a great awareness-builder for the topics presented.

As the year progresses, you may run into some unexpected safety issues.  These always make great subjects for discussion or education.  It is sometimes sensible or necessary to alter your education plan to insert a newer or more urgent safety topic into your year’s training schedule. 

Laboratory Safety is quite a broad topic with many sub-categories.  Each category, however, has an importance of its own and should not be undervalued.  Each part of lab safety should be discussed, reviewed, and taught over and over. Let no part of your overall program be forgotten, it should never become an “old acquaintance.”  Keep your laboratory safety program strong, and have a safe and happy new year!