Safety First! Real Stories from the Lab

Lab safety expert, Dan the Lab Safety Man, shares practical guidance on building an effective lab safety program, avoiding common mistakes, and strengthening safety culture to protect both staff and patients.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello and welcome to Diagnostics Decoded. Each month we will be pulling back the curtain on the science, the technology, and the people shaping the diagnostic industry. We are your hosts. I am Richard Keach, Business Development Manager at ZeptoMetrics.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

And I am Jessica Scheitz, market development specialist at ZeptoMetrics. So grab your caffeine of choice, get comfy, and let's have some fun. Enjoy the episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Thank you so much, Dan, for joining us. Um, we've got an exciting show ahead of us, and we've got a lot of questions for you. Before I get into it, my first question is how did you come up with your company name?

SPEAKER_02 0:47

That's a great question. Uh, thanks for having me here today. I really appreciate the time. Uh so I was a laboratory manager for about 11 years, uh, and I uh went and listened to a uh a local, uh, a local, there was a local convention with a speaker there who was known as the safety lady. Her name was Terry Joe Gyal, and she had her own lab safety consulting business. And I went to hear her speak, and uh at the same time there was a system safety officer position open uh where I worked, and I was applying for that. And so uh one of the things that happened uh it in all of that transition is uh my company hired her to help train me a little bit because I didn't have a whole lot of lab safety background. And uh so we got to work with each other. Uh she said, you know what? You know, I like the way you speak, I like the way you write, I really like your voice and safety. Why don't you become my retirement plan? She was a little bit older and she was looking toward uh retirement, and she said, I'll, you know, we'll transition the business to you, but you can't be the safety lady for obvious reasons. Um she said, How about Dan the Safety Man? That's it. Dan the safety man, perfect. Well, I went and looked it up and it was taken. There already is a Dan the Safety Man. So that's how the lab got in there. Dan the lab safety man. Uh it's a little bit uh it's a little bit longer, but it doesn't matter. It it it caught on, it's catchy, and uh it's been it's been my uh company name ever since. So uh it's uh it's stuck.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

After I saw the name a few years ago, it's been with me ever since. So yes, great marketing.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Um, we obviously have other questions besides just your name. That was the first one that I had to hit on before I forgot because it was it's it's so memorable. But I think it's a good start. Um, if you can just begin by sharing a little bit about yourself, and this can be where you're from, where you live currently, what you studied, and then number two, how you got into lab safety.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Yeah, so um I I grew up a little bit north of Buffalo, New York, um, in a little town called Lockport. Uh went to school at the University of Buffalo uh to become a medical laboratory scientist. And uh I worked a couple different jobs, moved to North Carolina, moved to Virginia, and then I became a lab manager uh in Williamsburg, Virginia. And when I was the lab manager, our hospital was partnered with a company. Um, so we became part of a system. Uh back then it was called Sentera Healthcare. Today it's Sentera Health. Um, and so I I began to understand the benefits of working with a system and having so many different resources and things like that. But I was kind of done with being a lab manager, like I said. So the lab safety officer position came open and it was a system position. So I would not just be a lab safety officer over one lab, but of several, uh, and I'd be able to work with system resources, and it was really great learning that. You know, the first day I walked through the labs, uh, I was getting some training from the previous safety officer who still worked for the company, and um, she was pointing out things as she was giving me tours of the reference lab and other places, and I thought to myself, I can't do this job. I didn't see any of the issues she just pointed out. But I learned over time that you have to develop those abilities to see problems and then to fix them, uh, that they don't come natural to everybody. So when we walk through labs today and other people who work in the lab don't see the dangers, uh, I don't ever blame them for that because it was a it was an early lesson for me. Uh so I started working with Terry Joe Gyle. Um she worked with me side by side pretty much for five years. She got me speaking, writing, um, authoring, uh all kinds of stuff, consulting and and all different kinds of labs. And then she retired, and uh I've been doing it ever since. So it's been about 15 years uh doing lab safety uh in all different kinds of labs, um, which has been great. So I I still work for Sintera Health, but I also on the side do uh consulting jobs and I have an annual Safety Academy webinar series that I put out and um lots of other things that keep me busy uh for a for us for a side job. But it's been great, it's been a great journey.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Thanks for sharing that with us. Okay, so lab safety 101. Can you share what goes into a laboratory safety program, why it's important, kind of just where we should start with that?

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah, absolutely. So when you first start to look to see if a lab's got a complete lab safety program in place, the first thing you're gonna look at sounds basic, policies and procedures. Do they have safety policies and procedures in place? And are they reviewed? Are people looking at them and are they followed? Uh then you also want to look at risk assessments. Have they performed risk assessments in the lab so that they understand what the hazards are and what the things are that need to be put in place uh to protect employees from those hazards? Uh engineering controls, uh, work practice controls, PPE, whatever it is. And then you should have for your lab safety program, you should have some safety monitors in place. Are you tracking injuries and exposures that are happening in the lab, the number of spills, the number of uh lab incidents, or even if your lab's got a really good culture, safety culture, you might even be tracking near misses, which is where you really want to be. That would be excellent. Um, but if you're just starting out trying to figure it out, don't worry about the near misses yet, you'll get there. But you at least have to have those safety monitors in place so that you have an idea of you know audit scores, uh, quality and safety monitors, um, injury exposures, number of spills, those kinds of things. And then probably the last piece to wrap all of that up uh would be an evaluation of your safety program so that you know that what you have in place is working, how can you improve it? How do you keep it going and how do you get it stronger?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Thanks. Um, so how often should a lab kind of re-evaluate their safety program? Or is it once that you have it, it's good to go?

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Yeah, you should never just say it's good to go. Um and it really depends on the depth of the evaluation you're gonna do. You should do a good evaluation at least annually. Uh, if you're when you look at like your chemical hygiene plan for labs that have chemicals, OSHA wants you to review the effectiveness of that plan at least once a year. You should also at that time be doing a review of the effectiveness of your safety program uh once a year at least. And that's a full report looking at looking at your audit results, looking at your policies and procedures. Are they updated? Did you add any new ones? Um, how are those numbers that we talked about? Are they going down? Your injuries, exposures, spills, etc. Um, did you bring in a bunch of new chemicals or reagents and and is your training and education complete with all of that? Did you start any new processes? And you could really look at all of that um and do a report on that at least once a year. We certainly do that uh in our organization. Uh, we do it every January. We put together that full report and we review that with the entire safety committee to make sure that they agree that the lab safety program is effective and growing.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Awesome. Can you share a little bit about how you can tie that safety program back to like in the hospital of patients' care?

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Yeah, so if you're in the clinical world, um I even I think it expands even beyond the clinical world, but laboratory safety equals patient safety. If you're doing the things in the lab that are safe, paying attention to detail, handing off effectively, uh speaking up for safety when you see an issue, if you're if you're following those kinds of things uh and and doing those kinds of things uh in the lab, that means that that's going to translate to the work you're doing for your customer. And if the customer is your patient, great. You're you're you're keeping your patients safe because you're keeping things in the lab safe. That translates automatically, and I'll get a specific example. I'm really good at at looking at my chemical labeling in the chemistry department, making sure everything's good to go, they're stored correctly, and all of that. So that means I'm also probably really good about patient labeling and checking my patient labeling, making sure I don't mix up specimens and things like that. So the the the qualities that I have or the the things that I've learned about safety uh directly in the lab also directly improve safety for the patients or your customers. If you're a research lab, chances are it's keeping your customers safe in that kind of lab as well, academic lab, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Perfectly said. Okay, last question around the lab safety program. From your experience, if you walk into a clinical lab, what would you say is most often overlooked when it comes to the safety program?

SPEAKER_02 10:06

It can really vary depending on the kind of laboratory it is. Often it's the details. Uh, what happens in a lot of laboratories is that we have a lot of different regulatory bodies that affect us. Uh, in a clinical lab, you have CAP, the College of American Pathologists, your accrediting body, but you also have OSHA. You also have the EPA, you also have your state branch of the EPA, you might have uh your local sanitation district uh setting rules and regulations for the lab. So it's hard to keep up with all the different regulations that that that come over the lab, uh, and it's a lot to keep up with. When I come into labs and and do audits or consulting, a lot of people struggle with waste management uh because it's such a huge topic, and there's so many, so many rules and regulations about it, and chemical management. Um, chemical management again is a huge area. Um and and sometimes uh it depends on the kind of lab it is, you just you have too many people sort of overseeing it or not looking at it at all because there's so many people in the pot. Um yeah, so details and all the different regulatory bodies and the probably the two main areas are like I said, waste management and chemical management. They're huge.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

So I I'm curious, I'm curious about the waste management because I I feel like there's some some movies that were and brought out from Hollywood on on some the poor ways of of you know disposing of your waste. Um, what are what's the proper way and uh what's uh maybe a horror story that you remember of how to and you don't have to name names or I'm sure there's probably some stories.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Yeah, there's a lot of stories. So waste management is one of my favorite topics. I love it because I've learned the most about it, but also because I've gotten in trouble a little bit about it in some of the labs uh uh in my earlier days, and and I know any other labs who are in the same boat. So uh labs who don't know what um what their waste generator status is. Um so are you a large quantity generator, a small quantity generator, a very small quantity generator? I didn't even know what that meant when I first became a safety officer. And when the EPA came into one of our sites, uh and I don't have any problem talking about it because guess what? It's public record. Um uh we were actually my records were really good. I had all my chemical waste manifests uh in in order and I had them paper clipped, and once the final manifest came in, I stapled it and removed the paperclip. They're like, your records are great, but guess what? They're so great that you're listed as a small quantity generator, but we we did the totals and the adding of the chemicals, you're actually a large, so you're in trouble for that. And they didn't say like that, but we had to change our status. Uh, we had to do a lot of work, and becoming a large quantity generator uh involves a lot more work and steps and regulations, and we had to learn all of that. So, you know, on one on one hand, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm in trouble for this. But on the other hand, I was learning stuff like crazy about waste management. And so you're you know, in your first question about you know, how do you manage it? Well, it depends on what waste stream you're talking about. Large quantity generator and small quantity, that's all really talking about chemical or hazardous waste, but labs have regulated medical waste or biohazard waste, labs have regular trash, labs have radioactive waste, labs have uh what they call universal waste, batteries and light bulbs and those kinds of things. So it all it all starts with classifying your waste stream and knowing what that is. So you could see it's hugely complicated. Regulated medical waste, biohazard trash, and now you have to separate that into bloody things, things with blood or body fluids, and then sharps, because medical sharps are regulated medical waste also, but they have to be treated differently, stored differently, disposed of differently. It's all it's huge, it's a huge topic.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

So I have um some family members that have worked for a disposal company in the past, and I won't name names, but is that the easiest solution is to for these labs to connect with a a private sector and to to help dispose?

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Yes. So a lot of uh academic organizations will have like an environmental health and safety department that helps them with that. But your vendor, your your waste vendor is usually one of your best resources. Hopefully that's the case. You have a great relationship with them and you can learn things from them. Here in Virginia, I can reach out to the to one of the people who works at the DEQ, the Department of Environmental Quality, that's the state branch of the EPA. But I can actually call her up and say, hey, can you come and inspect this laboratory? Uh, and she'll do a compliance inspection for me and she'll answer questions by email. We've developed a great relationship, so she's a good resource. But yes, my waste vendors too. If I have a question about, hey, can I mix these two waste together before you pick it up, or can I store it here? How does this have to be stored and labeled? They're also an excellent resource for that as well. So they're good, they're good. Um, that's a good external resource for a lab.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Do you see waste handling kind of handled differently by different types of labs? Um like would you say maybe you see different mistakes for RD versus academia versus a hospital?

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Yeah, and and sometimes the reason is oversight. Um, and you could even say lab safety in general is different in a lot of those different kinds of laboratories. But you know, starting with waste, um if I am in Norfolk, Virginia, for example, we have a big hospital and a reference lab. Our local wastewater authority is monitoring that effluent, that waste effluent that's going down the drain every day, 24-7. But if I'm in a tiny lab in the middle of nowhere of the of the state, it's probably not getting monitored. And if I'm throwing things down the drain that shouldn't be, nobody's stopping me. So nobody knows that happens. When I have gone in to do audits at other labs or I'm consulting jobs and whatnot, it's very surprising what you'll find what people are doing with waste. Kind sometimes because they don't know any better and they've never been told, but also because they've never been caught doing that. Um, so it's you have to you have to find out what the rules and regulations are. It's really important. Um, as far as the overall safety in different kinds of laboratories, uh it's it can be hard in an academic or research laboratory because you have so many different investigators or principal investigators who are over the lab. And so it's like it's almost like having too many cooks uh at the pot, so to speak. And uh it reminds me of the morgue in a hospital. You know, the lab's in charge of the morgue, security's in charge of the morgue, nursing's in charge of the morgue, the funeral homes are in charge of the morgue, the medical examiner's in charge of the morgue. So, guess what doesn't get overseen very well? The morgue. Uh and so that happens in in research labs a lot. You know, this PI wants this equipment, this PI owns these chemicals, and this PI owns those chemicals. Well, what a mess. Let's just put them all in alphabetical order. No, that's a terrible safety mistake. Never put chemicals in safe in alphabetical order, but things like that happen because so many people are in that same laboratory. It's very hard to manage safety there. RD labs, a little bit different too. We're developing reagents, we're developing chemicals, we're developing tests that we're gonna market. Uh, and it's okay if I'm drinking my Coke and eating my sandwich next to this analyzer, even though there's human blood specimens being run on this analyzer. But we see that in a lot of RD labs. They just don't distinguish their their safe zones from their unsafe zones very well.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

So, question about the chemical uh categorization when when you're going through the labs. And I've spent in my previous life all different types of labs.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Um Richard's about to admit that he put his chemicals in the alphabetical.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

I I I I ate a cheese steak next to uh no, I'm just kidding. I didn't I didn't do that, I swear. Um, how should and what do your are your recommendations on how to group chemicals?

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Yeah, so you should have a a chemical uh um chemical chart that tells you what chemicals you cannot put together. Obviously, strong acids and bases shouldn't be near each other, uh, but there are other oxidizers, um uh different kinds of um peroxide formers and things like that that are volatile uh and you have to be careful where you store them and what you store them next to. You need a chemical incompatibility chart, they're available in a lot of places.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yes, I want to point out a great chemical compatibility chart at Cole Palmer.com.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Yeah, yes. There's one there, use it. There you can find them on the web. I have one on my website. Lots of people have them. Uh but we need to use them. And so one of the biggest mistakes, like I said a lot in academic, sometimes RD, is storing chemicals in alphabetical order because it's easy to find them, but you it's very dangerous. You're gonna store incompatible chemicals next to each other, and at some point you're gonna have a reaction or an explosion or a fire, something that you weren't expecting at all because of that. Um, so uh storing like chemicals together, pretty good, but that's easy to say. You know, you kind of got to know your stuff, you kind of got to know your chemicals, what kind they are, and that you know, OSHA requires you to do a risk assessment on your chemicals anyway, and that should be part of it. You know, what is a safe to store next to, uh, as well as where you know what temperature should it be stored at, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

So, Dan, you've mentioned OSHA a couple times, and I'm I'm I'm curious on how this fits into your day-to-day job, um, and also how you are trained. Is OSHA a big part of how you are trained as a lab safety person, or is is there an external accreditation that you're following? How does that work?

SPEAKER_02 20:40

There are external trainings that OSHA offers or or companies offer through OSHA. You you it's hard to contact OSHA directly and say, hey, I want an OSHA 10-hour training or I want OSHA 30-hour training. I have an OSHA 30-hour card. Um, that doesn't make me any more special than anybody else. Anybody can get that. Um, I wanted to know the the training, it's a it's an overview of all of the different programs that OSHA is concerned about. Chemical management is one, but so is confined spaces. So is I'm trying to think of uh lockout tag out, trying to think of some basic OSHA programs, but those are of concern in some labs. So I wanted to know that. Um I've gone through some uh training organizations and and taken some courses um specifically to learn uh the OSHA um the things that they would that inspectors would look at in a laboratory, specifically in a laboratory. Their inspectors uh are very uh focused on the area that they're trained in. Um and uh I want to know as much as they're as I want to know about as much as they're getting trained about as I can find out. OSHA standards don't change a lot. Uh they it's it's hard to Get them changed. Um, probably the biggest update was back in 2013 with the globally harmonized system, which actually changed the Hascom standard. That's big because OSHA doesn't, you know, the bloodborne passing standard's been around since 1990 and hasn't changed since then. But how inspectors look at things, and uh there's been a lot of new things that come up in the field, uh, and they're still they still could cite something that's not exactly interpreted, you know, word for word in the standard. So I try to keep up with that as much as I can. Uh, and any, you know, anybody can take an OSHA training course. Again, you can get a 10-hour card, a 30-hour card, but that's really about the overall um training uh and safety programs that OSHA has, which is good, like very good to have. But when I make uh you know my safety audit checklist, uh if I'm doing a clinical lab, I'm gonna have all the CAP standards in there, but I also am gonna add all the OSHA standards that CAP doesn't cover. And there might be some about um chemical management, uh chemical um, you know, CAP requires you to have a chemical hygiene plan, um, but OSHA says, you know what, you need to review the effectiveness of that plan every year. So that should really be in your in your checklist and on your radar as well. Uh OSHA does a lot. You know, a lot of people in academic in the academic world, they think, uh, you know what, OSHA doesn't really apply because OSHA is concerned about employees and employers, mostly employees and their safety. And a lot of people think, well, these are students in these labs, we don't have to worry about it. But that's not necessarily true. And a lot of the things that are OSHA regulations are also best safety practices. So you wanna you want to keep those in mind as well in all kinds of labs.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

So you mentioned CAP, Dan. Um, and I want to touch on CAP and other regulatory uh and accreditations in terms of um the US labs. So how um does this play into safety programs? Is it mostly CAP as an accreditation? Are there others that your clients see that you concentrate on? How is that how does that fit in?

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Yeah, so CAP probably accredits most of the clinical labs in the U.S. Um, but there's also Cola, there's the Joint Commission, um anything and DNV, which is a hospital accrediting organization, they really don't do lab specifically. Um, and then of course AABB for the blood bank side uh of the laboratory. CAP is big, and uh if you know and follow the CAP regulations, um, you're probably in good shape uh with the other organizations as well. But if I, you know, if a client calls and says, hey, prep us for such and such an inspection, I'm gonna bring those specific guidelines. I'm also gonna bring my full safety audit and make sure we're covered by other things as well. Because CAP can say, make sure you're following EPA rules and regulations, but that doesn't really tell a lab anything specific about what they what they should be doing. So uh you have to know those things as well. And that's kind of what I you know try to teach my clients as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Okay, so I have a question. So say a lab or when a lab is bringing on a new piece of equipment, so a test analyzer in a clinical lab, what would you recommend to look for from a safety point of view?

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Yeah, you you have to we do what's what we we call it a risk assessment, but it's there are many different kinds of risk assessments you can perform. When a new process or instrument is brought into a laboratory, we do a risk assessment, which includes an analysis of all the risks uh of that test system, the instrument, the the process, whatever it is. Uh let's just say it's an analyzer. Is there a splash risk for performing a test? Is there a splash risk? And I'm just picking one risk for running QC. Is there a splash risk for conducting maintenance? And you go through all those steps and list them all, and you write down all the risks, and then you also write down what are the controls that are going to be put in place to mitigate those risks. And then you have a uh what you call a residual risk. So, for example, I can I could splash if I pull the tubing off this instrument to do some maintenance, that's a high risk. But if I wear face protection, I've mitigated that now. The risk is low. So therefore, I must wear face protection when doing that process. And then at the end of our risk assessment, we have like a checklist because we know how vendors are, we know how other people who come into the lab as guests are, and we want to check their work. So do we have all the do we have all the new reagents added to our chemical inventory? Do did we check out the analyzer and make sure the the vendor didn't install it with a permanent extension cord? Uh, or you know, did they make sure the the water source is away from the electrical source? Uh, did did we generate a new waste stream and how are we going to get rid of it? Because you know, vendors, and again, I don't blame them. They don't all have a laboratory background. Uh, it might just have an RD background. So they'll come in and say, Oh, it's okay to plug it in this way, oh, it's okay to throw this waste down the drain, and they just don't know. I wish they just wouldn't say or that they would try to find out, but that's why you do this risk assessment. Um, we had a recent example where we we got some new automation in our blood banks, and while we were doing the risk assessment, we discovered there's a waste container, and can you just throw the waste down the drain, or do you have to tie it to a drain line, or do you have to have a vendor take it away? And we had to do a lot of um education for our blood makers because they'd never dealt with chemical waste before until this analyzer came into play. But we never would have caught that without doing that risk assessment. Uh, so we use it to kind of close the circle on safety for new processes and and uh and and if you need examples of risk assessment forms, um, people can always ask me for one. I've got I've got a form that I'll I'm happy to share, but the APHL website uh for public health labs also has some good examples of risk assessments you can use for that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Where do you come into play when a lab wants to develop a new test? An LDT.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Uh I happily am not in the quality department and don't have to worry about IQCPs or all those other things with LDTs. Uh, and actually the regulations right now are kind of static, but that could change and the administration changes. Um and I don't have a lot to do with it other than at the end, once you've implemented it and started it, now I'm gonna do a risk assessment and make sure it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Gotcha. Okay. Um, and then another hypothetical question for you. Say you have a material from a supplier and that is research use only or RUO, and then they come out with an IVD product. What type of risk assessment do you have to do if they want to switch from that RUO to IVD product?

SPEAKER_02 29:27

From a risk perspective, I don't know that that really changes. Um I don't know that that really changes what a lab is going to do from a safety perspective, a risk perspective. Um it's the classification that's changed. Um, and you know, if it if it's going to be something that's gonna be put out in commercial labs, community labs, clinical labs, etc., we're just gonna, you know, just like I said, run a standard risk assessment. Uh but um yeah, I don't that's not gonna change a lot from my perspective.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

So I have some I have some questions on your current clients and kind of the the frequency of um of uh advice that you need to give on certain subjects. So first off, we've talked a lot about multiple different labs, academia, r and d um health departments. Um if you were to say your biggest customer, is it what would be your the grouping of your end users or customers?

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Um I I think it's a function of my my my background uh being in clinical labs. It is mostly clinical and chemical labs uh when and that are that are clients uh and that are um that are in the webinar academy, the safety academy, that call me up to to come and do audits and things like that. I definitely have been in though RD labs, uh business labs. I I can't mean their names, but that wanted some help with with the labs while they're developing um testing for laboratories, um, research labs, academic labs. Um you know, I I was doing an animal lab a couple years ago and uh research lab, and there was like in the basement a giant pig just walking around. Interesting. Animal labs are part of the job, and uh you just never know what you're gonna run into. Uh I did a a foot laboratory once uh where they where they collected human feet uh to to do surgery on. Um that was a little unusual, but there was a there were they had a lot of feet there. Uh, but they practice surgery there for a certain kind of product. So uh you just never know what you're gonna run into out there. Uh, but you know, safety applies across the board. You've got employees, you've got to protect them, you've got a pro you can look at any process in the laboratory and assess the risks uh and come out with the same kind of mitigation strategies. The problem is clients will call me sort of after the fact, hey, we just got uh we had a really bad inspection, we're in trouble, and part of our action plan is to hire a consultant and help us fix some of this stuff. Yeah, I you know, I wish you would have called sooner. Um, which, you know, uh I can help you sooner. Uh, there are there are labs that uh grew exponentially right after COVID um because they were COVID labs, uh, but they marketed and placed themselves well so that they expanded their testing menu, but their labs grew so fast that they couldn't grow their safety program fast enough to keep up with it. And so they need some advice on how to how to fix that. How do we put a program in place? How do we oversee our safety so that our people are staying safe uh in that? A lot of different ways um that can happen.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Um, I'm curious on how your job changed during COVID.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

It it changed my job dramatically, honestly. Um dealing with people who were suddenly in panic mode about the unknown uh really changed. I mean, it's rare uh that a safety officer gets calls from people crying, scared, yelling, um, because of things they saw in the news, because of things they didn't understand. Um at first, I think some of my reaction internally at least was a little bit of anger. I'd be, you know, because here somebody very upset, you know, worried about handling this COVID specimen when they didn't know COVID was, and I would think in my head, wow, you handle HIV and hepatitis every day. And last week I saw you on your cell phone in the lab. So you're not worried about that. Why are you worried about this? This is a respiratory virus, it's on a swab, you're not gonna breathe it in, you'll be okay. And I, of course, never said that. That's just what was in my head. But having to do so much communication and education quickly, we had to talk to and educate couriers in our system. We had to talk to and educate. I think the biggest change in our in lab services in our organization was for the phlebotomy team. We have an outpatient phlebotomy team, uh, and they had to learn how to collect COVID swabs, and they had to learn about PPE that they never wore before. They had to learn about um respiratory protection that they never wore before. And it was a big, big deal. We had to do a lot of training very quickly. We were in a spot where uh we ran out of, we were using disposable lab coats, and we ran out because the the factories that made the material for disposable lab coats were all told um they must make uh respirators instead uh out of the same material. So there's also a shortage of N95 respirators. We were reprocessing them as many organizations were. We set up UV light reprocessing and decontaminating and reuse. It we went places we'd never had gone before, uh and lab safety, yeah, for sure. It was huge, uh, and I'm so glad it's over.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

So so my last question, um, and this is completely unrelated to COVID, but I did mention before um how Hollywood and movie companies could jump on this topic because it's it is relevant and there are real-time stories here.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

But when I watch The Pit and I see them talking about how they're gonna, you know, blame the lab and you know uh or we're gonna we're gonna get a DNA test in five minutes. What do you what? That doesn't exist. Uh or you know, uh let's just let's have staff donate blood for this one person. Okay, no, we don't you can't do that. We don't do that, even though so all that stuff, you know, I wish I could fix for them um and get out there. But my from from my perspective, what I can do, little me, uh is is what is kind of what you're talking about, Richard, a little bit about our labs doing things that are unsafe for the environment. And I'm not necessarily an environmentalist, but I don't want labs pouring untreated formalin down the drain just because they think it's okay or they don't know any better, or because they never get caught. That doesn't mean it's okay to do. That's a carcinogen we're pouring down into our wastewater, which is gonna be guess what? You might be drinking that soon. So those, you know, those are the kinds of things I'm always trying to get that message out because a lot of labs do things because they've never been told otherwise, but that doesn't mean they're the right thing to do. Talk to somebody about whether or not it's the right thing to do and the safe thing to do. You might think it's safe because you never got caught, or nobody you know got sick, but you know, there are people who use cell phones in the laboratories every day that that they never got sick that they know of, and they don't know anybody else that got sick, and so they think it's okay because they themselves didn't face the consequences. But there are people who have faced the consequences, and sometimes the consequences are really bad. Sometimes it's death or life altering or career altering, and you don't want to be the person that that happens to. You don't want to be the example, so let's start doing the thing the right way the first time. That's that's really what you know what I want people to know in labs. Um, lab people, our numbers are dwindling. We're there are fewer, fewer people going into the lab field, and we're pretty valuable. Uh, and so we need to protect ourselves and our coworkers and our families and not bring stuff home so that we can continue to do this important work.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Okay, so if you could give labs one piece of advice for improving their safety culture, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 38:10

There are people out there who might be thinking that they're the only person in their laboratory that cares about lab safety. And you might be in charge of lab safety, or maybe you're not, or maybe you feel like nobody's in charge of lab safety. And my advice is don't quit, don't go away, don't ever give up. You have to be persistent. Um, there is uh I work with a lot of different lab leaders in and out of my organization, and they don't all have the same level of um support for the lab safety program. Some of them care, some of them don't have time to care, some of them just don't care. Uh it's all across it's all across the board. But there are people in the lab that I have to teach or coach and talk to in those labs and get them still to care, uh, despite that fact that nobody else cares. You can't change the culture in a day, but if you're persistent and you you're you're a role model and you're persistent and you don't go away and you tell John every day, button your lab coach, John, button your lab coach on, someday John is gonna get sick of it hearing it, and he's gonna do it as long as you stay persistent. That might only sound like one little thing, but that's culture change, and that's how it's gonna happen. And so I advise anybody out there who feels overwhelmed, daunted by a bad safety culture, an unsafe culture, unsafe things going on in your lab, don't give up. And if you need help with that, reach out to me. I I help people all the time. I'm not here to charge money for this kind of stuff. If you have a question, send it to me. I'll answer it. If you need help with something, let's set up a phone call. We'll talk about your issues, we'll help get them resolved. Please, please know that I'm a resource for that. That's that's an important message I want to get out there.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

That's fantastic. Well, Dan, the lab safety man, this has been extremely informative, and we are so happy to have you on. I know our paths will cross one of these days at a conference or um, you know, some sort of function. So I just want to say thank you very much for joining. I've learned a lot. Hopefully, our listeners have learned a lot. Um, and and just uh we wish you all the best of luck. And um, Jessica, anything else from your end?

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Yeah, Dan, if anybody would like to learn more about you, more about lab safety, could you share where they could get in touch or how they can get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_02 40:41

Yeah, and uh I'm sorry, it's a long website. It's w dot dan the lab safety man.com. Uh you go to that website and uh ask a question there. You can email me at info at dan the lab safety man.com. Uh yeah, please, please never hesitate to ask questions uh or to you know to reach out and see if I can help with your lab safety issues. Glad to help. I'm here to help. That's that's what I've been put here to do. So I will do it. And thank you guys for having me today. Uh, I really appreciate the time and and for helping me to get the message out.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Diagnostics Decoded. We'll be back each month with new conversations diving into the science, challenges, and innovations shaping diagnostics.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

If you'd like to learn more about Zepdometrics and the resources we offer, visit us at www.zeptometrics.com. Until next time, thank you so much for listening. Toodles