Evaluating the Safety of Qatar University’s Educational Labs in Biomedical Laboratory Sciences by Risk Management Process

Abstract

Background: Safety in the educational biomedical science laboratory is the most crucial topic because the students lack full knowledge of the hazards around them and lack of commitment. The hazards can be chemical, biological, physical, ergonomic, and radiation. Despite the category of hazards, all-hazards need to be identified, evaluated, and controlled, which is known as the process of risk management (RM). Hazard identification is considered the most crucial step in the RM process. The risk evaluation is the estimation likelihood of occurrence and severity of each risk. The Risk Priority Number (RPN) classify identified risks into four categories depending on the multiplication score, which are high-RPN (16-25), warning- RPN (12-15), medium-RPN (8-10), and low-RPN (1-6). According to the category of RPN, the hierarchy of control is selected. The hierarchy of control includes elimination (highest level), replacement, engineering control, administrative control, and personal protective equipment (lowest level). This study was conducted to evaluate the safety of the microbiology and the hematology labs, identifying potential hazards and determining the actions or controls required to eliminate or reduce any risks to the Biomedical Sciences (BMS) students, teaching assistants, lab technicians, faculties and other related workers, following an RM process. Materials and method: A prospective and retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted from January toMarch of 2020 in Laboratories of the Department of Biomedical Science (BMS) at Qatar University (QU). The study sample consists of two BMS education laboratories, which were microbiology (BIOM 322) and hematology (BIOM 451) labs. During the inspection process, checklists, data collection sheets (hazard identification sheets, and hazard evaluation sheets) were used. Then, each identified risk was evaluated in terms of severity and likelihood of occurrence. The RPN was calculated for each risk. The control measure was divided into two categories adopted and recommended control measures. These measures were evaluated per each lab, and a comparison between both labs was performed. A Comparison was carried out between the adopted and the recommended control measure for each lab and between the two selected labs. Results: Chemical, physical, ergonomic hazards have the highest percentages in the microbiology laboratory, with an equal percentage of 25% of each hazard. Chemical and ergonomic hazards have the highest percentage in the hematology lab with 31% each. Both microbiology and hematology labs do not have radiation hazards. The total number of hazards that were identified“ were thirteen (n=13) hazards in the hematology lab and sixteen (n=16) hazards in the microbiology lab. There is a significant difference between adopted and recommended control measures per each lab in terms of likelihood, severity, and RPN. Conclusion: Almost a quarter of the identified hazards in both labs is for chemical and ergonomic hazards. The recommended control measure can reduce the severity, likelihood of occurrence, and the RPN for the identified hazards in both labs.