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Finding important safety steps in procedures

Lab Safety Advisor, January 2, 2007

Q: Staff often forget to include special safety precautions when performing procedures. How can we make them more aware of the requirements?

A: In the "old format" for writing laboratory procedures, a section toward the beginning of the document listed safety equipment. Often this equipment was not mentioned again later, leaving readers to guess at (or ask) where in the procedure the safety precaution was to be used. In addition, readers often skip over the introductory procedure sections to get to the actual procedure steps and thus often miss important safety information that is needed later.

"Special precautions" refers to safety measures taken in addition to the universal requirements for wearing gowns and gloves. The best way to communicate any special safety precautions to is to put the information in two places in the procedure. First, a list of special safety equipment should still appear near the beginning of the procedure so that the reader can locate and collect any required items before starting. Second, embed the safety instruction in the step of the procedure where the reader needs to know this information, as shown in the following example.

Presenting safety information this way provides two important benefits:

1. It specifies that readers use the correct safety precaution at the correct time
2. It ensures that important information in the safety manual is realized in the actual work environment

Editor's note: Lucia M. Berte, an expert in quality and safety management in laboratories, is the guest columnist for this issue of Lab Safety Advisor. For questions and comments on this article, please contact: Lucia M. Berte, Quality Systems Consultant, at lmberte@comcast.net.

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