The American Hospital Association (AHA) and the FBI have joined forces to address workplace violence in healthcare, blending the FBI’s expertise in behavioral threat assessment with the AHA’s understanding of hospital operations.
In this guest column, Dan Scungio, MT(ASCP), SLS, laboratory safety officer for multihospital system Sentara Healthcare in Virginia, and otherwise known as “Dan, the Lab Safety Man,” discusses the important issues that affect your job every day. When you think about laboratory safety, images of...
I don’t know that I’d run across this much over the last little while (I can see where it might have been more prevalent in healthcare during the early Wild West days of the pandemic), but apparently there have been enough issues relating to ill-fitting Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) as it...
The year draws to a close, and it’s time for laboratory safety workers to look back at all the laboratory safety stories and topics we’ve covered this year. After all, many lab safety issues from 2024 will cross over with us into 2025.
When the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) set out to find a solution to improve staff well-being, it approached the issue from the organization's side. How can a healthcare organization make its difficult, emotionally invested,...
On January 1, 2025, the new workplace violence (WPV) prevention standards for home health agencies will go into effect for facilities accredited by The Joint Commission. Some of the requirements that will go into effect include creating a formal definition of WPV, outlining leadership oversight...
When the Stress, Trauma, and Resilience (STAR) program at Ohio State’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health set out to find the best ways and timing to reach out to those who have experienced a traumatic event, it discovered that victims weren’t the only ones in need of support....
One of my favorite comic book story arcs is a miniseries called The Watchmen. In the story, the superheroes get a bit out of control and a common phrase emerges from the people: “Who watches the Watchmen?” The idea makes me think about how safety issues in labs can sometimes occur...
I will admit that I’ve been sitting on this one for a couple of months as I have no interest in sensationalizing any acts of violence, even inadvertently. But it also seems like not too much time passes before firearm violence (yet again) makes front page news, so I guess this topic may be more...
