Impact of a pilot laboratory safety team workshop

Publication date: Available online 15 January 2019Source: Journal of Chemical Health and SafetyAuthor(s): Kali A. Miller, Kaitlin I. TylerRecurring academic laboratory accidents and a lack of consensus about the best approach to chemical safety culture education has led to the development of laboratory safety team (LST) programs at many research institutions in the United States. LSTs are collaborative groups that seek to improve the safety culture within a department or multiple departments. They usually consist of a partnership between departmental faculty, staff, and students and have the goal of providing concrete opportunities for all of these stakeholders to continuously improve safety practices within their department. These programs also offer a supplementary form of safety education that is designed to fit the specific culture and needs of each institution. As these programs have developed in a variety of institutions, best practices for forming and maintaining LSTs have begun to emerge. In order to better understand these best practices, we developed a pilot workshop for the 255th National American Chemical Society Meeting audience to provide attendees with the knowledge and resources to go back to their home institutions and establish LSTs or similar programs. To understand the effectiveness of this pilot workshop, we conducted a small survey of the attendees at the first presentation. Questionnaires before and after the workshop show that the workshop was well rec...
Source: Journal of Chemical Health and Safety - Category: Chemistry Source Type: research