Laboratories, Volume 2, Issue 2 (June 2025) – 5 articles

People in laboratories often use paper or digital formats for incident reporting. These methods make it difficult to group events, check follow-up actions, or use the data to improve safety. This article presents a conceptual model for digital incident reporting in laboratories, designed to improve occupational safety and health (OSH) by addressing the lack of standardized reporting structures. The model was developed based on a review of safety standards, laboratory procedures, and relevant studies published between 2010 and 2024. The review identified five basic functions required for an effective digital incident reporting system: structured data input, event classification, alerting, access to reports, and follow-up tracking. These five functions were used to create a modular structure that shows how incident reporting works in laboratories. The model can be used with simple tools, and it does not require specialist software. It can be adjusted to local workflows and settings. While ISO 45001:2018 describes the goals of incident management, it does not offer a structure for reporting. This model responds to that gap. It supports consistent documentation and can help laboratories review incidents. This makes it easier to track responses, especially when no formal system exists. Full article

The Marburg virus (MARV) is an extremely contagious zoonotic virus that leads to severe hemorrhagic fever in humans, with a fatality rate as high as 90%. It is known for causing nosocomial outbreaks in hospitals and laboratories globally. The recent outbreak of MARV in Rwanda highlighted significant challenges to infection prevention and control (IPC) protocols in two major hospitals, leading to outbreaks in intensive care units (ICUs) where the majority of infections occurred among healthcare providers. In contrast, the Rwandan National Reference Laboratory (NRL) demonstrated remarkable preparedness and resilience due to systematic investments and capacity building, which resulted in zero contamination, exposure, or infection, despite handling thousands of samples from across the country. This stark difference in infection dynamics between laboratory personnel at the NRL and healthcare providers underscores the effectiveness of the strict biosafety and biosecurity measures in place. Consequently, this situation underscores the urgent need for cross-facility training, the sharing of best practices, and the role of the NRL in reinforcing IPC measures throughout the country. This report delves into the preparedness and resilience of the NRL by examining its exemplary laboratory biosafety and biosecurity practices, emphasizing the crucial need for ongoing training, supervision, adherence to safety protocols, and improvements in the structure and operations of healthcare settings to prevent future outbreaks. Full article

Based on the interpretation of the identified risk biases from a narrative perspective, this paper studies the biases in safety and security risk management of chemical-related academic laboratories from four parts: risk identification, risk assessment, risk control and continuous monitoring. Mainly systematic error, inclusion of risk events, cognitive factors, model/algorithmic and social/interpersonal during risk management are discussed. The bias related to uncertain risk events, which is the most common and easily ignored during risk management, mainly including the imbalance between safety risk management and security risk management. Therefore, while protecting the laboratory from unintentional and unpremeditated safety risks within the system, it is also critical to protect the system from external, deliberate and premeditated security risks. This research paper is expected to spur and promote more discussion and the best practices in laboratory risk management among researchers, educators, managers and other stakeholders for handling biases in the risk management of chemical-related academic laboratories. Full article

For their future profession, pre-service chemistry teachers need to acquire practical skills during their university studies. In this article, the development, use and evaluation of several laboratory courses that aim at the acquisition of experimental competencies are described and discussed. During their bachelor’s studies, students take laboratory courses in general, inorganic, organic and physical chemistry and a research internship. During their master’s studies, students take one laboratory course in organic chemistry. To evaluate these laboratory courses, quantitative and qualitative research approaches were used. As the results of those evaluations show, the students are content with the courses and rate them as relevant for their future profession. The courses often use methods and tools that pre-service chemistry teachers can also use in their future profession in schools; such methods and tools serve as a didactic double decker, which means that pre-service chemistry teachers use their experiences as a student later in schools as a teacher. To further develop the laboratory courses, this idea will continue to be considered. Full article

The persistence of recurrent safety noncompliance (RSN) in university laboratories presents a critical challenge to laboratory safety risk management. This paper deconstructs RSN by conducting an in-depth analysis of potential safety risks, their underlying causes, and management obstacles. The research reveals that the phenomenon of RSN is fundamentally the result of the combined effects of complex human factor risks and outdated management methods. At the human factor level, cognitive biases regarding experimental safety risks and negative resistance lead to “habitual violations” of safety regulations. At the management level, routine laboratory safety inspections, requirements for rectifying safety hazards, and commonly adopted punitive measures have proven insufficient to prevent RSN. To address this issue, this study proposes actively leveraging the advantages of artificial intelligence (AI) in dynamic perception and proactive interventions. It advocates for the deep integration of AI technologies into the transformation of the management paradigm for RSN in university laboratories. Furthermore, this study preliminarily explores the application prospects, applicable principles, and scope of application of AI technologies in this context, providing an important reference for enhancing the systematic management of RSN in university laboratories. Full article