“When contractors are hired, there should be an agreement which designates which agency will provide which [safety] requirements,” Scungio says. “The bottom line is that contracted employees must follow all required safety practices and policies of the temporary employer organization.”
Specimen couriers are often overlooked when it comes to proper safety training. They perform the important role of transporting specimens for testing, but without the proper education and tools, they can find themselves in harmful situations.
Sharps safety is a perennial problem in the laboratory environment, and staff can become inured to the dangers that needles, syringes, and other sharps pose after dealing with them day in and day out. It’s always a good time to remind staff about sharps safety and disposal, so we talked with ...
In 2016, because of several incidents in national high-containment laboratories, a “safety stand-down” was recommended. That term gets used often, but not everyone understands how a safety stand-down works. Has your department been in a similar situation? Have you encountered a series of similar...
How do you remove harms and dangers from your laboratory? Safety officials have studied this question for years and found many innovative solutions to various issues. But when deciding what action to take in removing a threat, the best tool to use is the hierarchy of controls
Healthcare Life Safety Compliance - Volume 25, Issue 12
Every healthcare facility staff member should be familiar with the acronym RACE, used to provide guidelines when responding to a fire emergency. Today we will discuss one of the often overlooked and frequently cited life safety deficiencies, which is the letter C in the RACE acronym: Confine.
There is a new “pox” on lab safety—monkeypox. Like the most recent novel virus (COVID-19), the unknowns about the monkeypox virus are creating new safety concerns for laboratorians, and it is now time to nip unnecessary fears in the bud. Safety leaders can accomplish this through preparation and...
The CDC has updated its guidance on infection control of monkeypox for healthcare settings, reminding providers that any case suspected of being of the more deadly Congo Basin clade requires more extensive precautions, including the handling of hazardous medical waste (HMW). Any medical waste...
