The absence of safety culture; What contributes to laboratory incidents?

By Jason P. Nagy, PhD, MLS (ASCP)CM,QLS

 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Upon completion of this article, the reader will be able to:

  1. Describe the correlation of laboratory accidents, errors, and mistakes.
  2. Discuss the importance of standard operating procedures that emphasize laboratory safety.
  3. Identify physical environment (PE) categories that should be considered in PE rounds.
  4. Describe how to incorporate laboratory safety into training and list effective management oversight tools to review safety indicators and assess staff safety competency.

About the Author

Jason P. Nagy, PhD, MLS (ASCP)CM,QLS is the Laboratory Safety Support Coordinator at Sentara Health, a multi-hospital system in Virginia and North Carolina. Jason brings almost 20 years of laboratory experience to the lab as a medical laboratory scientist (MLS) and more recently in laboratory safety and education roles.

Photo credit: 45294312 © Tyler Olson | Dreamstime.com

Not Enrolled

Course Includes

  • 1 Article
  • 1 Test
  • Course Certificate
  • MLO and Northern Illinois University (NIU), DeKalb, IL, are co-sponsors in offering continuing education units (CEUs) for this issue’s CE article. CEUs or contact hours are granted by the College of Health and Human Sciences at Northern Illinois University, which has been approved as a provider of continuing education programs in the clinical laboratory sciences by the ASCLS P.A.C.E.® program. Continuing education credits awarded for successful completion of this test are acceptable for the ASCP Board of Registry Continuing Competence Recognition Program. Readers who pass the test successfully (scoring 70% or higher) will receive a certificate for 1 contact hour of P.A.C.E.® credit. The fee for this continuing education test is $20. This test was prepared by Amanda Voelker, MPH, MT(ASCP), MLS, Clinical Education Coordinator, School of Health Studies, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL.

    Level of Instruction:
    Passing scores of 70 percent or higher are eligible for contact hour of P.A.C.E. credit. This test is no longer valid for CEUs after .

    NIU is approved as a provider of continuing education programs in the clinical laboratory sciences by the ASCLS P.A.C.E. ® Program.