Safety Practices and Perceptions Among Laboratory Employees at a Tertiary Care Hospital

Introduction: Clinical laboratories form an important link in the healthcare chain. Raising the safety standards is an important aspect of the transformation of an organizational culture to provide good-quality healthcare services. The present study aims to determine the safety practices and perceptions of the existing system of safety among laboratory employees.

Materials and methods: This observational cross-sectional study was carried out among laboratory healthcare workers at a tertiary care hospital in Tamil Nadu, India. A pilot study (10% of the sample size) was also done to assess reliability. The sample size is 150: n = Z²pq / d², where Z = 1.96, p = 38.7, q = 61.3, and d = 7.7. Substituting the values in the formula, we have: n = [(1.96)² x 38.7 x 61.3] / (7.7)² = 150. The study was conducted using a questionnaire to gather demographic and professional data and details regarding the safety practices and perceptions of the existing system of safety among laboratory employees. Statistical analysis was done using Microsoft Excel 2010 (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA) and IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 23.0 (Released 2015; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States).

Results: In this study, there were 99 female and 51 male participants. In the safety practices among laboratory technicians, 62% (n = 93) noted that they do not wash their hands before wearing gloves and 20% (n = 30) consume food and beverages during work hours. In the responses to perceptions related to job responsibilities, 50.7% (n = 76) of the lab technicians consider that noise in the workplace causes a disturbance, and 47.3% (n = 71) consider that infrequent cleaning of air conditioners causes health issues. The rest of the items in the questionnaire have scores between 80 and 100%. Safety practices in relation to safety perceptions were statistically significant with respect to age, overall safety perception, job responsibilities, and communication.

Conclusion: Overall, lab employees have high awareness and good adherence to safety practices. The current study concludes that a regular assessment of the safety climate is one way to enhance the organizational culture, motivate the workforce, and improve the quality of health services because it enables the identification of the aspects that require more attention and collaboration on quality to create a safety culture that encourages continuous improvement.