Laboratories are a unique environment from an OSHA training standpoint. They include complex chemical and biological materials, potentially harmful equipment, and large numbers of staff.
In this guest column, Dan Scungio, MT(ASCP), SLS, laboratory safety officer for multihospital system Sentara Healthcare in Virginia, and otherwise known as “Dan, the Lab Safety Man,” discusses the important issues that affect your job every day. Today he talks about ventilation in...
For many hospital safety and quality leaders, accreditation once followed a predictable arc: a ramp up to survey day, stress during the survey visit, and then a return to normal operations. That approach is becoming increasingly misaligned with how OSHA inspectors, accrediting bodies, and...
Laboratory compliance programs have never suffered from a lack of policies. Instead, what they often struggle with is consistency—particularly during busy handoffs, staffing shortages, and routine operational pressure. As regulatory expectations tighten and inspections increasingly focus on how...
It’s no secret that one of the major threats to laboratory safety is the chemicals used within them. Yet, failure to properly store chemicals is one of the top citations in laboratory inspections.
If you’re serious about improving lab safety in 2026, the new year isn’t about shiny resolutions or rewrites to policies that no one reads. It’s about focus, prioritization, and solutions that actually work in the real world of specimen backlogs, staffing shortages, and alarms that never seem to...
Biological spills, from blood or bodily fluids to infectious agents, are an inevitable reality in medical laboratories. Many spills can be safely managed through standard precautions and standard operating procedures. Others pose a significant risk to staff, patients, and the environment....
Most hospital labs are focused on schedules to check equipment calibration, yet staff behavior patterns at shift changes are what create the riskiest compliance gaps, according to Stephen Huber, president of Home Care Providers, based in Orange County, California. Huber oversees healthcare...
A new year offers an opportunity for hospital lab leaders to reevaluate their compliance posture, close persistent gaps, and strengthen systems that support safety, accreditation readiness, and regulatory performance.
Environmental disinfection is a key component of a safe and effective laboratory. Disinfection protects researchers and public health, prevents contamination and cross-contamination of experiments, and keeps laboratories in compliance with safety and regulatory requirements.
