Case study analysis and findings

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Laboratory safety is of extreme importance because of not only employee health and safety but also because of maintaining environmental health and safety. Lab safety is essential because it deals with all the safety issues and problems related to chemical, biological and other scientific materials and researches/experiments. Therefore, it is highly important that the new safety manager, that is, Rene, who is hired by Best Pets, Inc., performs well. The previous lab safety manager was not coming up to the company's safety and ethical standards and requirements due to which he is replaced by Rene.

Best Pet Test, Inc. is a midget, blood and urine sample analysis company which has 50 employees working under it. Samples are gathered from veterinarian offices and animal shelters of different tri-state areas and are brought in the laboratory to be tested and analyzed . The company hired Rene as a lab safety manager six months before . She was hired to investigate the present status of the work flow of Best Pet Test, Inc. She replaced Harold, who had been on the seat for past 15 years . After going through the records it showed that Harold wasn't keeping precise and exact records which created a difficulty for Renee in order to understand have a clear picture of the company's current status. That is why she had to go through all over again the old records and had to contact all the clients, suppliers and contractors to know where the company was standing at that time .

There were ten employees and one supervisor in the lab who were wholly responsible for attending, testing and cataloging the samples . Once a sample is brought into the company it is allotted with a bar coded decal which helps to track it down through the whole process . Out of three hand- held bar code readers, two were out of order since a year and the staff without informing, accommodated the code bars by hand written labels on to the sample . Presently the laboratory supervisors observed discrepancy and vast differences in the results of the sample testing . The negative results and the poor performance carried out by the employees displeased Beth, the lab supervisor. T his caused a tense full situation for him as he was answerable to the company's owner .

Scientific Assessment:

The laboratory was in a bad condition and somewhere the negligence of the staff members was even responsible for the current situation . Beth requested Rene to check in the testing labs to determine and pin point the methods which are against the safety and health regulations for working with blood- Bourne or infected bacteria which could easily be transmitted by insects or other vectors.

The lab supervisor told Rene that Harold was suppose to provide training seminars on laboratory safety once after every two years to the faculty, but as Harold was known for taking short cuts and easy trails, he had not acknowledged and taught the personnel about the current accustomed standards and safety guidelines available, due to which the staff unknown of the guidelines practiced blindly which resulted in poor performance and negative results which made Beth disappointed and he got worried . Rene noticed many drawbacks of the lab faculty which were not safe and against the health regulations of the company.

Usually staff members were seen in the lunch area or mail room with their lab coats on and there was no one there to stop or restrain them from doing it . Staff was even noticed enjoying their morning coffee next to centrifuges in the lab while testing blood samples which was very dangerous for the laboratory and the staff members itself. Rene also found overflowing Sharps container, and unlabeled bottles of poisonous chemicals kept in a disorganized way in the fume hood which couldn't be easily understood . The state of the laboratory was in a very bad condition and upside down. Things for Rene were already bad as she was already under a great pressure to find and come up with solutions and remedies as quick as possible for the problems when something worst happened . A story was published in a local news paper about the abandoned quarry where a laboratory waste and junk was found with the Best Pet Test Inc. Labeled on them. It was the worst day ever the company had ever seen and it had received outnumbered phone calls that day from the concerned locality and citizens which had become a big threat to the company owner and the laboratory .

Summary and Conclusion

After the news was all over, the company owner got anxious and worried about his and the laboratory's reputation as the news was all over and had made a bad publicity of the laboratory . The owner did not wanted to lose his customers, neither wanted to create a poor public relation . So to avoid all the chaos, the owner contacted Rene to investigate and study where the laboratory was lacking in . Rene collected samples from the quarry to examine the waste which was supposed to be completely discarded by the Medi-Waste incineration company.

According to the account statements of the laboratory it was confirmed that payment to the incineration was been made and they had been informed to pick up the regular throw away but still the reason was not known that why wasn't the lab's waste completely made null of the dangerous and poisonous fumes . She still did not contacted the county health department for help at that time as she first wanted to get sure that whether the waste was contaminated by the radioactive materials and was it really polluting the nearby environment . In order to do so she went herself to the quarry to pick up few samples . She brought samples of disposable pipettes, discarded polycarbonate test tubes and two bags of lab's disposed of junk mixed with agarose gels, nitrocellulose membranes from Southern Blots and started examining them herself.