Four Ways to Enhance Safety in Your Diagnostic Laboratory

Working in a medical lab exposes you to many dangers and hazards on a daily basis.  Whenever you are in a medical laboratory, you must follow proper safety standards to keep everyone safe. Often, you will be exposed to dangerous materials, making it imperative that you practice proper safety protocol to keep yourself safe from these dangers.  As a lab that provides diagnostic dermatopathology in Pittsburgh, PA, we keep our technicians safe by using the following methods.

Wear the Right Gear

While this may seem basic, you need to stay focused and wear proper personal protective equipment while in the lab. This will protect you from being exposed to dangerous diseases that could quickly become problematic if you are exposed to them.   When you are working in the lab, you need to wear proper clothing covering, face masks, ventilation masks, and any other apparel that will protect you from the hazards in the lab.

Follow Chemical Handling Protocols

Whenever you are dealing with dangerous chemicals, you must follow proper hygiene. By monitoring yourself and ensuring that you are following adequate hygiene standards, you will protect yourself from potentially hazardous chemicals that you definitely don't want lurking on your skin. These chemicals can be dangerous, which is why you must follow all of your lab's chemical hygiene plans. These plans are meant to keep you safe, staving infections away. If your lab workers are not following chemical hygiene plans, they can be putting their safety at risk. You must always follow these plans, as they will ensure that you are constantly safe.

Create Safety Manuals

Suppose your lab consistently works with similar dangerous materials on a day-to-day basis. In that case, it may be beneficial for your lab to create a handbook for the proper procedure when handling each chemical that you will be running into. This will help you to always know exactly what courses you need to follow, allowing you to follow the proper procedure at all times. Without an appropriate manual of safety, you may have problems forgetting exactly what precautions you need to take with each material, so you must create a standard handbook for your team to follow.

Inspect the Practices

Routine inspections of your lab practices and your employees will allow you to keep everyone safe.  When you want to ensure that the current practices are working, you need to take the time to watch them in action.  This will keep your lab safe and will help you to keep a tight watch on the rule-breaking that is going on in your lab.  For this reason, you must always check in on your lab workers, ensuring that you are not losing touch with your workers and allowing them to commit actions against lab policy.

These are a few ways that you can keep your lab facility safe for your lab technicians and staff members.  Providing your medical partners with the data they need for diagnoses may be your job, but safety in the lab should be your priority.  Contact our lab for diagnostic dermatopathology in Pittsburgh, PA to hear about how keep our lab safe today.