Precautions
to Prevent Transmission of Infection in the Clinical Laboratory
1.
Access to the laboratory is to be restricted to authorized persons.
Apparel
2. Always use personal protective equipment to handle potentially infectious materials.
3.
Remove personal protective equipment
before leaving the work area, and decontaminate reusable items after each use.
4.
Remove gloves when contaminated, after each session and
before handling uncontaminated items such as telephones, paperwork.
Personal
hygiene
5.
Wash
hands with liquid soap and water after removing gloves or before leaving the
laboratory.
6.
Cover
all skin lesions with waterproof dressings.
7.
Keep
hands and other items away from face, nose, eyes and mouth.
8. Long hair must be secured and held back away from eyes, Bunsen burners and equipment.
9. Do not take personal clothing and belongings into the laboratory.
10. Do not wear sandals, slippers or high-heeled shoes in the laboratory.
11. Eating, drinking, smoking and the application of cosmetics are
strictly prohibited in the laboratory.
Work
practices
12. Keep laboratory doors closed.
13. Keep all work areas clean and tidy
at all times.
14. Wipe laboratory bench tops with an
approved disinfectant solution at the end of each working day.
15. Always use automatic pipettes or
pipetting devices. No mouth pipetting is permitted.
16. When working with pathogens, perform
aerosol generating procedures in a biological safety cabinet (BSC).
17. Keep the use of hypodermic needles
to a minimum. Avoid re-capping needles after use. Where re-capping is
unavoidable, use needle re-capping device. Discard needles into sharps box or
designated container.
18. Discard sharps, broken glass and
glass slides into sharps box or designated container.
19. Decontaminate all potentially
contaminated materials before disposal or processing for re-use.
20. Dispose clinical waste in accordance
with the Code of Practice published by the Environmental Protection Department.
21. Decontaminate equipment before
mechanical and electrical servicing.
22. Perform preventive maintenance for
all equipment at appropriate intervals.
23. Label all containers in the
laboratory clearly with their contents and appropriate warning labels.
24. Use trolley to transport potentially
infectious load of heavy weight.
25. Ensure guidelines for handling spillage of infectious materials in the laboratory are available.
Transport of clinical specimens
26. Place the specimen container in a plastic bag with the request form outside the bag, then place the specimens in a rigid container, and keep specimens upright to minimize the possibility of spillage.
27. Report accidents and incidents
promptly to the responsible person. These include spillage of infectious
materials and chemicals, breakage of tubes during centrifugation, cuts, burns
and contamination of non-intact skin or mucous membrane by potentially
hazardous materials.
28. All injuries must be treated
immediately.
29. All staff are
advised to have hepatitis B vaccination if they are negative for both hepatitis
B surface antigen and antibody.
30. All staff are
advised to keep their basal serum for future reference.
Additional Precautions for Handling Clinical Specimens Potentially Containing SARS Coronavirus in the Laboratory
The followings are supplementary to existing
standard laboratory safety precautions appropriate to the biological containment
level of your laboratory setting.1 Recommendations are based on
latest available information on infection control precautions of the SARS
coronavirus.2,3
1. Procedures that carry minimal risk of aerosol generation may be handled using good microbiological techniques in biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) laboratories with appropriate BSL-2 work practices, such as:
a.
Routine diagnostic testing of serum, blood and urine specimens;
b. Routine staining and
microscopic analysis of fixed smears;
c.
Routine examination of bacterial cultures;
d. Pathological
examination and processing of formalin-fixed/inactivated tissues;
e.
Molecular analysis of extracted
nucleic acid preparations.
2. Procedures that carry an increased risk of aerosol generation should be performed in a biological safety cabinet where practicable.
3. Where a biological safety cabinet is not available, then appropriate combinations of personal protective equipment (e.g. disposable gloves, solid front gown with cuffed sleeves, eye protection, surgical mask or full-face shield, respirator) and physical containment should be used according to the risk of aerosol generation and exposure.
4. Viral cell culture and initial characterization of viral agents recovered in cultures of SARS specimens require BSL-3 facilities and BSL-3 work practices.
5. Potentially SARS-infected materials should be kept in a secure location with appropriate documentation.
6. When a laboratory worker suffers from an illness that may be consistent with SARS, he/she should seek medical attention immediately and report to the laboratory supervisor.