Common Accident in Medical Laboratory

Laboratory safety

Medical laboratory practice, is an area of practice with many associated accidents, and hazard. At such everyone working in the laboratory is at risk of contracting transmittable disease via contact or from clinical samples. However accident is unavoidable in a highly sophisticated and advanced laboratories, but overcrowded and untired laboratories is at high risk of accident and communicable diseases. Point to know is that bad practice in medical laboratory is the major cause of laboratory accident. As such it is recommended that management of laboratory should be solely responsibility of well-trained laboratory personnel. And make sure code of safety practice is assign to every laboratory practice. It also necessary that all accident in the laboratory is reported to safety officer in charge of the laboratory safety.

List of common laboratory accident

The following are the major area where accident and other harzad in the medical laboratory is are discuss.

1. Infection
2. Electric shocks
3. Burns
4. Toxic chemical hazard
5. Injury

Infection

There are various way which infection occur in the medical laboratory, but the following are the common once.

1. Ingestion of pathogenic organism are a result of pipetting via mouth
2. Ingestion of pathogenic organism through food or finger
3. Pathogenic organism often find their way into the body system through the following ways, pricks, skin lesion, cut, scratches etc.
4. Inhalation of pathogens in air born droplet (aerosols), that may release during spilling of infected fluid, breakage, open container contain pathogenic organism etc.

    Electric Shocks

Most electric shock that take place in the medical laboratory is as a result of ignorance or carelessness, and could be cause by the following;

1. Touching naked wires
2. Wrong equipment installation
3. Bad electrical circuits

Burns

Burn in the medical laboratory may be cause by the following condition;

1. Ignition of inflammable substance
2. Mistakenly swallowed corrosive chemical during pipetting or splashing of chemical.
3. Fire from spirits lamps, Bunsen burner and overloading damage equipment.

Toxic chemical Hazard 

The following are major cause of chemical hazard in the laboratory.

1. Contact of skin with toxic chemicals
2. Inhalation of ingestion of toxic chemical as a result mouth pipetting

Injury 

Injury in medical laboratory result in the following ways

1. Cut from broken glass
2. Cut from knife
3. Walking on a glass chip
4. Accidental pricking with needle or other sharp objects