Overview

Safety first! Always pay attention to potential hazards when you enter a laboratory. Therefore, we have taken part in the lab safety rules and guidelines course. Also, all of our team members were informed about guidelines for lab work. In order to make them more familiar with safety rules in S1 lab, we had some extra safety instructions as well. In addition, we had created some standard operations, which address the general safety concerns of the laboratory during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lab safety Rules and Guidelines

To be allowed to work in Tischler´s Lab - Prof. Tischler- we should firstly participate in the instruction course for safety level 1 first. Our attendance form had to be signed by different employees from different parts of the laboratory.

Biosafety level one, the lowest level, applies to work with agents that usually pose a minimal potential threat to laboratory workers and the environment and do not consistently cause disease in healthy adults.

Start working in the Lab

Due to the presence of many potentially harmful chemicals and pieces of equipment, laboratory settings come with certain safety risks. It is important to take certain lab safety precautions to prevent common injuries. For example, all of our lab members had to wear lab coats, during lab work. In addition, protective goggles and gloves had to be used, especially, during work with hazardous substances. We should mention that, in the gel electrophoresis room, we had to make our gel under the vent of the biosafety cabinet while wearing gloves. These filtered cabinets are primarily designed to protect against exposure to particulates or aerosols.

Our lab is equipped with essential safety equipment such as fire extinguishers, chemical fume hoods, first aid kits, laboratory-safe, refrigerators, fire blankets and safety showers applied in our lab. The rescue service is located behind our faculty and which is available 24 hours a day.

Since all members were not able to participate in the lab experience permanently, we came to the idea, to create a weekly lab working - plan. It was immensely helpful to schedule our people weekly and to plan our lab work.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)

We put all of our effort and focus into writing an effective standard operating procedure that describes clearly the step-by-step process that must be taken, in order to properly perform every method, devices, and protocols associated with our project.

On the other hand, with the help of standard operating procedures, we could significantly reduce errors, elevate efficiencies and profitability, and, more importantly, produce guidelines on how to resolve issues, overcome obstacles, and determine risk factors.

Independent of how much lab experience and knowledge every member of our team had, by means of our standard operating procedure, they were able to work individually and reproducible.