April 5, 2024 • 16 mins
Are you equipped to face a 'man down' scenario in your lab? Ensuring your team's safety is paramount, and that's why we, Dan Scungio and Sean Kaufman, are here to share essential strategies and firsthand accounts for navigating these high-stress situations. Our latest episode of the Lab Safety Gurus Podcast is a deep dive into the critical response protocols needed when seconds count. With stories pulled from our own experiences, including a harrowing tale from a highly infectious disease unit in Atlanta, we provide a stark look at the dangers of unpreparedness and the life-saving power of immediate, informed action.
We lay out the must-have tools for every lab's emergency kit, from mechanical creepers to AEDs and stop-the-bleed kits, while driving home the importance of comprehensive safety training for all personnel. You'll gain practical advice on how to maintain a state of readiness, and why something as simple as a zip-tied first aid kit can foster accountability and ensure prompt, proper care. This isn't just about ticking boxes for compliance; it's about instilling a culture of respect and preparedness that extends to every member of your lab—because when it comes to lab safety, every detail matters, and every second counts. Join us for a conversation that could very well change how you think about emergency response and lab safety.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Lab Safety Gurus Podcast.
I'm Dan Scungio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
And I'm Sean Kaufman, and together we're providing
safety insights for thoseworking in laboratory settings,
doing safety together.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Alright, hello everybody.
Hope everybody's doing fine.
I have something on my mindtoday, Sean, that I want to talk
about.
What do you got, Dan?
What's on my mind today, Sean,that I want to talk about?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
What do you got, Dan?
What's on your mind today?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
You know, a long time ago maybe two or three years
ago, actually, it was probablylonger ago than that I went to
some special training at thistraining center in Atlanta,
georgia, and I was, you know, Ihad been a lab safety officer
for a while and one of thethings that we had to learn
(00:49):
about in our organization was,you know, how to handle
situations in a highlyinfectious disease unit.
One of our hospitals was goingto be an assessment hospital for
Ebola and there are certainfunds that come with that, but
there's also certain trainingand things that you have to have
with that.
And so I go to this trainingcenter and all of a sudden the
(01:14):
trainer brings this informationthat he's about to go over and
he's got us, you know, donningand doffing in this special PPE
and all of a sudden thesituation comes up hey, what if
somebody goes down?
What if there's a man down inthis laboratory?
What are you going to do?
And that trainer, sean, was you.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I was like wait this sounds familiar.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
This sounds familiar and all of a sudden, there's
this dolly I don't know what youcall it a dolly that you use to
like roll under a car to fixthe engine, or change the oil.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
A mechanical creeper is what it's called a mechanical
creeper Is that the officialname of it?
Believe it or not, it has aname.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
And so we were able to put the person onto the
creeper and get them rolled outof the BSL-3 lab or BSL-4,
whatever we were dealing withthat day.
It wasn't really in thatsituation, it was a training lab
and figure out how to do that,and I think of this all the time
(02:20):
.
So as a lab safety officer, Ihave seen some horrendous
responses to employee down orman down, and I think people
aren't always as prepared asthey need to be for such a
situation, and so we're stilllearning.
Thanks to your training.
We're still putting togetherour response for our HIDU
(02:44):
laboratory.
But we also have tons ofclinical laboratories where I
work, and I've seen situations.
I'll give you a couple examples.
We had an employee who feltweak all of a sudden and could
no longer stand up, and so shesort of collapsed against a wall
(03:05):
and sat down on the floor inthe laboratory in her PPE, and
the immediate response from theco-workers was we need to get
this girl some orange juice.
And so they instead of callingfor some kind of help because
you know, in a hospital settingyou have the ability to call for
(03:25):
help- yes.
And so, instead of doing that,they ran to the cafeteria and
brought some orange juice intothe laboratory and let her drink
it there on the floor and lether make the decision the
patient as to whether or not sheneeded any kind of medical help
.
And you know, some people justdon't want that, they don't want
to go to the emergency room,they don't want to make a big
(03:46):
deal out of something.
It's just their.
Maybe it's their nature, maybeit's happened to them before and
they're not worried about it.
But you know, as a safetyofficer, I'm always training my
people.
You will call for help, you'llget a response and that person,
if they've gone down, they'regoing to the emergency
department for treatment of somesort, even if the emergency
(04:06):
department just tells them hey,you are a-okay now, I have to
(04:28):
say back in 2004, so we're 20years ago we were doing our
first training in the BSL-4 atEmory, in the mock training lab,
and we were doing a scenariolike this.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
We had a breathing bag and basically, as I was
watching it, it was really not avery good response and I
thought we need to do better andand so we convened a panel of
emergency room docs,firefighters and police officers
and not police officers,firefighters and EMS personnel
(04:55):
and we posed the challenge tothem in high containment,
because we realized we were justbiosafety professionals, we're
not medical professionals.
We posed the challenge, weshowed them the lab environment,
we talked about what we wereworking with and we posed the
challenge what would you want usto do if somebody went down in
the lab?
And we developed a policy?
(05:16):
It's published.
Actually, if you just go toGoogle and you type in the alert
training program, emoryUniversity, you'll see a
publication from the APSAjournal.
It's actually published, it'savailable.
We've trained thousands ofpeople on it.
But let me I'll go through kindof the first thing I would do.
If somebody goes down in a lab,the very first thing that you
(05:37):
do is you don't approach them,dan, why?
Why would you not approach themDan?
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Are we talking about in a highly infectious disease?
No, we could say in any lab.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Let's just say any lab.
If someone goes down in a labenvironment, the first step is
not to approach them.
Why?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
So my head goes to maybe they're being electrocuted
, okay, or there's something inthe area that made them go down
and if you go over there, it maymake you go down as well Strong
fumes or something.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I am so happy that it seems that retention of the
training program has worked.
That's the answer, dan, I'mlooking for.
I never want to criticizepeople that have always tried to
help people and injured, but ifthose individuals had gone and
gotten orange juice and walkedover to the person without
calling for help, it could havebeen a chemical, it could have
been electricity whatever wasputting that person on the
(06:36):
ground could have put thoseother people on the ground, and
then you've got nobody outsideof the lab knowing there's a
problem.
The very, very first thing youdo when you see someone going
down is you call out of the lab,knowing there's a problem.
The very, very first thing youdo when you see someone going
down is you call out of the laband you make sure that anyone
and everyone outside the labknows you're having a laboratory
emergency.
That's the very first thing thatyou do, and we learned that
(06:57):
that was something we weren'tdoing, because if you're out in
the open and there's lots ofpeople around, you've got a lot
of air, there's a lot of peoplearound, you can yell, call 911.
You can actually point tosomebody I think that's the
protocol Point to someone andsay call 911.
And then you can go over andassess somebody.
But when you're in a confinedspace, it doesn't have to be
high containment.
When you're in a confinedlaboratory environment, it's a
(07:22):
confined space.
You want to make sure ifsomeone goes down, the first
thing you do is call out.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
That's the start.
Yeah, I can't agree more.
It frightens me a little bithow some people behave in those
situations, and it's not acriticism.
Not everybody responds well toan emergency situation.
Absolutely.
It's human nature, absolutelyNot everybody responds well to
an emergency situation.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Absolutely, it's human nature.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Absolutely.
I find that in a crisissituation, I need to pause for a
second, for a few seconds, andgather my wits.
That's just how I am, but thereare other people who jump right
to it.
Let's get right to it, and Iknow people are different, but
I've also seen some responsesthat you know.
I just want people, I just wantlisteners, to think about the
(08:09):
steps you take, because thereare other situations that can
happen too.
Right, If somebody falls orsomebody hits their head and
they fall to the ground andyou've assessed the situation,
you know there isn't a fume orelectricity or whatever it is
that could have taken them down.
You know the reason for it andmaybe the person's awake and
(08:29):
they say, okay, I feel like Icould use an evaluation.
Awake.
And they say, okay, I feel likeI could use an evaluation.
I have seen situations where labpeople will put their
co-workers in a task chair androll them down to the emergency
department, which is verydangerous, especially to
somebody who may be weak or maycollapse again.
We're not talking about awheelchair, we're just.
(08:52):
You know, let's grab the firstchair we can find and roll them.
So here's a chair, an officechair, with no arms on it and
they're just kind of rolling theperson down the hallway, Things
like that.
That's not the safe way to getthe employee to where they need
(09:13):
to go and you have to considertheir safety all the way until
they get to the point oftreatment.
If they need treatment, andnine times out of ten if they're
falling out in the laboratory,they probably need some sort of
treatment.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
So let's say, you know, I've made an assessment.
Sean and this person passed out.
They're in a small sort of anteroom off the histology area and
I saw them fall through theglass door and I think that
they've spilled like fivegallons of formalin in the room
and they've been overcome.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
What do I do?
Well, I mean again after you'venotified individuals of the
situation, I would do anythingwe could to then help.
One of the things that we haveto realize is EMS.
When they respond, it may takesome time.
Dan, just off the top of yourhead, I'm wondering do you know
(10:08):
in the United States about howmany sudden cardiac arrests
occur in the United States everyyear?
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Oh gosh, I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
There are over 350,000 out of hospital.
Wow, 350,000 out of hospitalsudden cardiac arrests.
Now, remember that panel.
I told you we convened.
Yeah, they said that there willbe people that pass out because
of blood sugar issues.
Maybe pregnant women will passout because of blood sugar
issues.
Maybe pregnant women will passout because of blood sugar
issues which, by the way, in theyears I've been doing this,
(10:38):
we've heard about this.
People may have seizures.
They may be over.
You know, something may happenelectrical or something may
happen from a chemicalstandpoint but the panel
recommended that we prepare forsudden cardiac arrest, and what
we mean by that is that everylab that we worked in we would
recommend having an AED, becausereally, only 10% of people that
(11:01):
have that sudden cardiac arrestin the United States live
because of lack of access toAEDs and the speed at which an
AED would need to be hooked up.
But let me, I'm goingsidetracked.
Let me get back to the point.
Ems is not going to respondvery quickly, unless, of course,
you're at a hospital, so youmay have to wait.
But your key here is that oneof the golden principles that
(11:30):
emergency medical responders aretaught is I'm not going to put
myself at an increased risk whentrying to attend to a patient.
So they've got to assess theirenvironment.
So the next thing I would askis is the environment in which
the person has gone unconsciousa safe environment for EMS to
enter?
And if the answer is no, thenyour job as a lab is to prepare
to move somebody to a placewhere EMS can come in, and that
(11:52):
may be a common quarter.
That's why we use the creeper.
The creeper is a you know, it'sa $30 solution where you can put
half of a body on it andliterally wheel the person out
of tight spaces.
You remember that.
Of course, that training aspectyes, that's why we use the
creeper.
It's much safer than a chairand trying to lift.
You know, by the way, if you'relifting a body that's
(12:14):
unconscious onto a chair, it'snot going to go very well for
you.
It isn't going to happen.
So to me, you know again, Iworry about containment.
Now, as you know, I work at thehigh level containment
environments, and so we're alsofocused not only on somebody's
surviving, but we also need toensure containment, because
(12:35):
we've made promises to not onlystaff but to people outside of
the laboratory that we're goingto do everything we can to make
sure what we work with stayswhere we work with it.
So there are multiple issuesTypically in a diagnostic lab.
I don't think you're going torun into worrying about massive
containment breaches, but itcould happen to worrying about
(12:56):
massive containment breaches,but it could happen.
But in reality I think that youjust have to make sure that the
environment in which the personis unconscious is a place that
EMS is going to come into.
And if it can't, and if theywon't, then you're going to have
to move the body outside of thelab, so EMS will handle them
outside the laboratory.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, absolutely, and you said it was like a sidebar,
but really this is another keypoint I would want listeners to
understand about about being inthe laboratory and people having
something like a heart attackor anything like that.
You should have an aed nearby.
If you're in a you know medicalfacility, chances are there are
(13:30):
those devices around, but ifyou're in a standalone or
research-type laboratory, makesure you've got a device like an
AED Maybe a stop-the-bleed kit,something like that as well and
a first aid kit.
If you're part of a hospital,you don't need to have a first
aid kit OSHA doesn't require itbut certainly if you're in a
standalone facility, you do needsomething like that.
(13:52):
You want to make sure it'sstocked, that things aren't
expired and that you're keepingit in a clean area.
Don't keep your burn lotionsand band-aids in the you know
dirty drawer in the laboratoryeither.
Keep it in a clean area forwhen you need it and make sure,
if you have those things, thatpeople are trained to use them.
Aeds are great.
(14:13):
A lot of them give youstep-by-step instructions on how
to use them, but the first timeyou have to use one, you're
going to be scared to death.
I know I would be.
I've never had to, but I hopenever to have to.
But they're there for a reason.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Listen to how many sudden heart attacks there are
like that, dan, I know becausewe're running out of time, we
maybe need to do a part two onthis one.
But let me draw something.
You said first aid kit.
Do me a favor If you're goingto do a first aid kit, make sure
that you have a zip tie on itthat closes it.
And let me explain why, explainwhy.
(14:50):
I have found in the years wherefirst aid kits are in labs that
people will treat cuts andsticks with the first aid kit
inside the laboratory and nottell people, and so I don't like
that.
So please don't lay Band-Aidsaround or anything like that,
because if you get a cut or astick, number one it should be
(15:10):
reported, but number two, itshould be treated outside of the
lab by somebody who can assessyour risk and whether or not
something needs to beprophylactically offered.
So, for example, in a lab, likein a hospital, dan, if it's hiv
, you need to be on prophylacticcountermeasures within 45
minutes.
So, yeah, so, yeah, so.
So you really want people to bereporting cut sticks as soon as
(15:34):
possible and not justself-treating.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, in the clinical setting, if you're in a
hospital, I recommend people notto have first aid kits.
For exactly that reason, I wantthem to come to somebody when
there's an injury in thelaboratory, the laboratory.
And if you do have one yes, itneed the it should be zip tied
(15:57):
or put in the manager's desk sothat nobody can get to it
without letting the manager knowso that the issue's been
escalated yeah, perfect, yeah,yeah treat, treat.
Treat your co-workers and your,your staff with respect by being
ready for these things that canhappen.
This is uh.
We're all human beings.
We all have failable bodies andsomething could go wrong at any
time, then we need to beprepared for it in the
(16:17):
laboratory.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We are the lab safety gurus Dan Scungio and Sean
Kaufman.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Thank you for letting us do lab safety together.
Welcome to the Lab Safety Gurus Podcast.
I'm Dan Scungio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
And I'm Sean Kaufman, and together we're providing
safety insights for thoseworking in laboratory settings,
doing safety together.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Alright, hello everybody.
Hope everybody's doing fine.
I have something on my mindtoday, Sean, that I want to talk
about.
What do you got, Dan?
What's on my mind today, Sean,that I want to talk about?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
What do you got, Dan?
What's on your mind today?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
You know, a long time ago maybe two or three years
ago, actually, it was probablylonger ago than that I went to
some special training at thistraining center in Atlanta,
georgia, and I was, you know, Ihad been a lab safety officer
for a while and one of thethings that we had to learn
(00:49):
about in our organization was,you know, how to handle
situations in a highlyinfectious disease unit.
One of our hospitals was goingto be an assessment hospital for
Ebola and there are certainfunds that come with that, but
there's also certain trainingand things that you have to have
with that.
And so I go to this trainingcenter and all of a sudden the
(01:14):
trainer brings this informationthat he's about to go over and
he's got us, you know, donningand doffing in this special PPE
and all of a sudden thesituation comes up hey, what if
somebody goes down?
What if there's a man down inthis laboratory?
What are you going to do?
And that trainer, sean, was you.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I was like wait this sounds familiar.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
This sounds familiar and all of a sudden, there's
this dolly I don't know what youcall it a dolly that you use to
like roll under a car to fixthe engine, or change the oil.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
A mechanical creeper is what it's called a mechanical
creeper Is that the officialname of it?
Believe it or not, it has aname.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
And so we were able to put the person onto the
creeper and get them rolled outof the BSL-3 lab or BSL-4,
whatever we were dealing withthat day.
It wasn't really in thatsituation, it was a training lab
and figure out how to do that,and I think of this all the time
(02:20):
.
So as a lab safety officer, Ihave seen some horrendous
responses to employee down orman down, and I think people
aren't always as prepared asthey need to be for such a
situation, and so we're stilllearning.
Thanks to your training.
We're still putting togetherour response for our HIDU
(02:44):
laboratory.
But we also have tons ofclinical laboratories where I
work, and I've seen situations.
I'll give you a couple examples.
We had an employee who feltweak all of a sudden and could
no longer stand up, and so shesort of collapsed against a wall
(03:05):
and sat down on the floor inthe laboratory in her PPE, and
the immediate response from theco-workers was we need to get
this girl some orange juice.
And so they instead of callingfor some kind of help because
you know, in a hospital settingyou have the ability to call for
(03:25):
help- yes.
And so, instead of doing that,they ran to the cafeteria and
brought some orange juice intothe laboratory and let her drink
it there on the floor and lether make the decision the
patient as to whether or not sheneeded any kind of medical help
.
And you know, some people justdon't want that, they don't want
to go to the emergency room,they don't want to make a big
(03:46):
deal out of something.
It's just their.
Maybe it's their nature, maybeit's happened to them before and
they're not worried about it.
But you know, as a safetyofficer, I'm always training my
people.
You will call for help, you'llget a response and that person,
if they've gone down, they'regoing to the emergency
department for treatment of somesort, even if the emergency
(04:06):
department just tells them hey,you are a-okay now, I have to
(04:28):
say back in 2004, so we're 20years ago we were doing our
first training in the BSL-4 atEmory, in the mock training lab,
and we were doing a scenariolike this.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
We had a breathing bag and basically, as I was
watching it, it was really not avery good response and I
thought we need to do better andand so we convened a panel of
emergency room docs,firefighters and police officers
and not police officers,firefighters and EMS personnel
(04:55):
and we posed the challenge tothem in high containment,
because we realized we were justbiosafety professionals, we're
not medical professionals.
We posed the challenge, weshowed them the lab environment,
we talked about what we wereworking with and we posed the
challenge what would you want usto do if somebody went down in
the lab?
And we developed a policy?
(05:16):
It's published.
Actually, if you just go toGoogle and you type in the alert
training program, emoryUniversity, you'll see a
publication from the APSAjournal.
It's actually published, it'savailable.
We've trained thousands ofpeople on it.
But let me I'll go through kindof the first thing I would do.
If somebody goes down in a lab,the very first thing that you
(05:37):
do is you don't approach them,dan, why?
Why would you not approach themDan?
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Are we talking about in a highly infectious disease?
No, we could say in any lab.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Let's just say any lab.
If someone goes down in a labenvironment, the first step is
not to approach them.
Why?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
So my head goes to maybe they're being electrocuted
, okay, or there's something inthe area that made them go down
and if you go over there, it maymake you go down as well Strong
fumes or something.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I am so happy that it seems that retention of the
training program has worked.
That's the answer, dan, I'mlooking for.
I never want to criticizepeople that have always tried to
help people and injured, but ifthose individuals had gone and
gotten orange juice and walkedover to the person without
calling for help, it could havebeen a chemical, it could have
been electricity whatever wasputting that person on the
(06:36):
ground could have put thoseother people on the ground, and
then you've got nobody outsideof the lab knowing there's a
problem.
The very, very first thing youdo when you see someone going
down is you call out of the lab,knowing there's a problem.
The very, very first thing youdo when you see someone going
down is you call out of the laband you make sure that anyone
and everyone outside the labknows you're having a laboratory
emergency.
That's the very first thing thatyou do, and we learned that
(06:57):
that was something we weren'tdoing, because if you're out in
the open and there's lots ofpeople around, you've got a lot
of air, there's a lot of peoplearound, you can yell, call 911.
You can actually point tosomebody I think that's the
protocol Point to someone andsay call 911.
And then you can go over andassess somebody.
But when you're in a confinedspace, it doesn't have to be
high containment.
When you're in a confinedlaboratory environment, it's a
(07:22):
confined space.
You want to make sure ifsomeone goes down, the first
thing you do is call out.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
That's the start.
Yeah, I can't agree more.
It frightens me a little bithow some people behave in those
situations, and it's not acriticism.
Not everybody responds well toan emergency situation.
Absolutely.
It's human nature, absolutelyNot everybody responds well to
an emergency situation.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Absolutely, it's human nature.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Absolutely.
I find that in a crisissituation, I need to pause for a
second, for a few seconds, andgather my wits.
That's just how I am, but thereare other people who jump right
to it.
Let's get right to it, and Iknow people are different, but
I've also seen some responsesthat you know.
I just want people, I just wantlisteners, to think about the
(08:09):
steps you take, because thereare other situations that can
happen too.
Right, If somebody falls orsomebody hits their head and
they fall to the ground andyou've assessed the situation,
you know there isn't a fume orelectricity or whatever it is
that could have taken them down.
You know the reason for it andmaybe the person's awake and
(08:29):
they say, okay, I feel like Icould use an evaluation.
Awake.
And they say, okay, I feel likeI could use an evaluation.
I have seen situations where labpeople will put their
co-workers in a task chair androll them down to the emergency
department, which is verydangerous, especially to
somebody who may be weak or maycollapse again.
We're not talking about awheelchair, we're just.
(08:52):
You know, let's grab the firstchair we can find and roll them.
So here's a chair, an officechair, with no arms on it and
they're just kind of rolling theperson down the hallway, Things
like that.
That's not the safe way to getthe employee to where they need
(09:13):
to go and you have to considertheir safety all the way until
they get to the point oftreatment.
If they need treatment, andnine times out of ten if they're
falling out in the laboratory,they probably need some sort of
treatment.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
So let's say, you know, I've made an assessment.
Sean and this person passed out.
They're in a small sort of anteroom off the histology area and
I saw them fall through theglass door and I think that
they've spilled like fivegallons of formalin in the room
and they've been overcome.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
What do I do?
Well, I mean again after you'venotified individuals of the
situation, I would do anythingwe could to then help.
One of the things that we haveto realize is EMS.
When they respond, it may takesome time.
Dan, just off the top of yourhead, I'm wondering do you know
(10:08):
in the United States about howmany sudden cardiac arrests
occur in the United States everyyear?
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Oh gosh, I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
There are over 350,000 out of hospital.
Wow, 350,000 out of hospitalsudden cardiac arrests.
Now, remember that panel.
I told you we convened.
Yeah, they said that there willbe people that pass out because
of blood sugar issues.
Maybe pregnant women will passout because of blood sugar
issues.
Maybe pregnant women will passout because of blood sugar
issues which, by the way, in theyears I've been doing this,
(10:38):
we've heard about this.
People may have seizures.
They may be over.
You know, something may happenelectrical or something may
happen from a chemicalstandpoint but the panel
recommended that we prepare forsudden cardiac arrest, and what
we mean by that is that everylab that we worked in we would
recommend having an AED, becausereally, only 10% of people that
(11:01):
have that sudden cardiac arrestin the United States live
because of lack of access toAEDs and the speed at which an
AED would need to be hooked up.
But let me, I'm goingsidetracked.
Let me get back to the point.
Ems is not going to respondvery quickly, unless, of course,
you're at a hospital, so youmay have to wait.
But your key here is that oneof the golden principles that
(11:30):
emergency medical responders aretaught is I'm not going to put
myself at an increased risk whentrying to attend to a patient.
So they've got to assess theirenvironment.
So the next thing I would askis is the environment in which
the person has gone unconsciousa safe environment for EMS to
enter?
And if the answer is no, thenyour job as a lab is to prepare
to move somebody to a placewhere EMS can come in, and that
(11:52):
may be a common quarter.
That's why we use the creeper.
The creeper is a you know, it'sa $30 solution where you can put
half of a body on it andliterally wheel the person out
of tight spaces.
You remember that.
Of course, that training aspectyes, that's why we use the
creeper.
It's much safer than a chairand trying to lift.
You know, by the way, if you'relifting a body that's
(12:14):
unconscious onto a chair, it'snot going to go very well for
you.
It isn't going to happen.
So to me, you know again, Iworry about containment.
Now, as you know, I work at thehigh level containment
environments, and so we're alsofocused not only on somebody's
surviving, but we also need toensure containment, because
(12:35):
we've made promises to not onlystaff but to people outside of
the laboratory that we're goingto do everything we can to make
sure what we work with stayswhere we work with it.
So there are multiple issuesTypically in a diagnostic lab.
I don't think you're going torun into worrying about massive
containment breaches, but itcould happen to worrying about
(12:56):
massive containment breaches,but it could happen.
But in reality I think that youjust have to make sure that the
environment in which the personis unconscious is a place that
EMS is going to come into.
And if it can't, and if theywon't, then you're going to have
to move the body outside of thelab, so EMS will handle them
outside the laboratory.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, absolutely, and you said it was like a sidebar,
but really this is another keypoint I would want listeners to
understand about about being inthe laboratory and people having
something like a heart attackor anything like that.
You should have an aed nearby.
If you're in a you know medicalfacility, chances are there are
(13:30):
those devices around, but ifyou're in a standalone or
research-type laboratory, makesure you've got a device like an
AED Maybe a stop-the-bleed kit,something like that as well and
a first aid kit.
If you're part of a hospital,you don't need to have a first
aid kit OSHA doesn't require itbut certainly if you're in a
standalone facility, you do needsomething like that.
(13:52):
You want to make sure it'sstocked, that things aren't
expired and that you're keepingit in a clean area.
Don't keep your burn lotionsand band-aids in the you know
dirty drawer in the laboratoryeither.
Keep it in a clean area forwhen you need it and make sure,
if you have those things, thatpeople are trained to use them.
Aeds are great.
(14:13):
A lot of them give youstep-by-step instructions on how
to use them, but the first timeyou have to use one, you're
going to be scared to death.
I know I would be.
I've never had to, but I hopenever to have to.
But they're there for a reason.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Listen to how many sudden heart attacks there are
like that, dan, I know becausewe're running out of time, we
maybe need to do a part two onthis one.
But let me draw something.
You said first aid kit.
Do me a favor If you're goingto do a first aid kit, make sure
that you have a zip tie on itthat closes it.
And let me explain why, explainwhy.
(14:50):
I have found in the years wherefirst aid kits are in labs that
people will treat cuts andsticks with the first aid kit
inside the laboratory and nottell people, and so I don't like
that.
So please don't lay Band-Aidsaround or anything like that,
because if you get a cut or astick, number one it should be
(15:10):
reported, but number two, itshould be treated outside of the
lab by somebody who can assessyour risk and whether or not
something needs to beprophylactically offered.
So, for example, in a lab, likein a hospital, dan, if it's hiv
, you need to be on prophylacticcountermeasures within 45
minutes.
So, yeah, so, yeah, so.
So you really want people to bereporting cut sticks as soon as
(15:34):
possible and not justself-treating.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, in the clinical setting, if you're in a
hospital, I recommend people notto have first aid kits.
For exactly that reason, I wantthem to come to somebody when
there's an injury in thelaboratory, the laboratory.
And if you do have one yes, itneed the it should be zip tied
(15:57):
or put in the manager's desk sothat nobody can get to it
without letting the manager knowso that the issue's been
escalated yeah, perfect, yeah,yeah treat, treat.
Treat your co-workers and your,your staff with respect by being
ready for these things that canhappen.
This is uh.
We're all human beings.
We all have failable bodies andsomething could go wrong at any
time, then we need to beprepared for it in the
(16:17):
laboratory.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We are the lab safety gurus Dan Scungio and Sean
Kaufman.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Thank you for letting us do lab safety together.
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