Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Lab Safety Guru's Podcast. I'm Dan Scungio.

Speaker 2: 0:07

And I'm Sean Cawthon, and together we're providing safety insights for those working in laboratory settings. Doing safetytogether. Welcome to the show, everyone, and today we're going to start with an introduction of a good friend of mine, dan Scungio. He's also known as the Lab Safety man. Correct me if I'm wrong. Is that correct, dan?

Speaker 1: 0:30

That's it, dan the Lab Safety man.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Dan, the Lab Safety man Now he is. I'll tell you this right now. He's an incredible individual. I don't have many friends We'll get into a little bit about me later, in the next version but he is somebody I call a friend and one of the kindest, most giving individuals that I know and has an amazing philosophy when it comes to laboratory safety and he's excited. He's passionate about giving people what they need, not only to be safe in laboratory environments, but also he's just a passionate, committed professional in the industry of laboratory safety. So I want to introduce everyone to Dan Scungio. Dan, welcome to our podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Well, thanks, sean. I really appreciate those kind words, and I feel the same way about you. I'm really excited to be doing this together, and I think it's a good time for our listeners to get to know us a little bit better first. So this is a great first episode.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Well, yeah and you know, I don't know where this is going to go we're going to do this informally. We're going to kind of introduce you to the listeners. So why don't we do this? We'll just start by saying, dan, introduce yourself to the listeners.

Speaker 1: 1:48

Well, hi, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Dan Scungio. I am a laboratory safety officer and a laboratory safety consultant, as Sean said, known as Dan the lab safety man have been in lab safety for about 15 years and, yeah, I didn't know I would love it so much, but when I started working in the field in lab safety in particular I just felt a stirring inside and have been working hard for it ever since. I want people all over the world who are working in labs to be safer, and I've been working hard to get that message out for a long time now. So it's been my honor to be able to work with some of you and now with Sean. So it's been a great run so far and I hope to keep it going strong.

Speaker 2: 2:34

Well, I think we're going to have a lot of fun doing this. We're going to try and grow this to be something pretty big, so we're focusing on a lot of things. But, dan, let me ask you this what inspired you to get into lab safety? Was there like an incident? What brought you to laboratory safety?

Speaker 1: 2:54

Well, I was a lab manager for 11 years in a couple of different clinical hospital laboratories and, Sean, I have to tell you and a little embarrassed to admit I was terrible with lab safety. Just to give you an example, we were working in a laboratory, I was the manager, and our hospital was bought out by a bigger company and so we were merging with them and the people from the system labs came in and the lab safety officer came over and one of our first questions to me was hey, Dan, why is your staff break refrigerator with the food in it in the middle of your laboratory? Well, we didn't have room in our break room for refrigerators, so we put it in the lab. Hold on Dan. Hold on Dan.

Speaker 2: 3:41

I know you're on a roll here, but I got to stop you on this one. You had a laboratory refrigerator with food in the middle of your lab, In the middle of the laboratory. Very good For those who are joining us and don't have much experience in labs. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Speaker 1: 3:59

It is a really bad thing. It's an OSHA violation. It's so dangerous in so many ways, and that was just one of the things she found when she came and visited. It was not good. My staff wasn't really wearing lab coats while they were working. There were plants all over the lab. We had a good African violet collection. It was pretty bad, and so my eyes were sort of opened by that initial encounter.

Speaker 1: 4:26

And then I ended up going to another lab as a lab manager in the same system and then the safety officer that I was working with. I was learning more and more all the time from her and she was really good at her job. And then she got a promotion within one of our hospitals and the position came open and I thought Could I do this? Could I really do this and do I like it that much? And so it was a good.

Speaker 1: 4:53

It was an important question for me Was that the career change I was gonna do after 11 years in lab management? Was that the path I wanted to choose? I really had to think long and hard about doing it, and so we had a local laboratory educational meeting and it was like the CLMA. The CLMA is no longer with us. They've now become ASCP, but local chapters head meetings and they brought speakers in, and one of the speakers that came at the time locally to us was Terri Jo Gile and she was known in the clinical lab world as the safety lady and she was an expert.

Speaker 1: 5:37

She'd been working for 20 years in lab safety. She was the expert. People asked her questions. She wrote articles. She was a national speaker and she was coming to our local meeting to speak and I thought, okay, let me go hear what she has to say. And it was an interesting topic. She talked about lab safety. She did a really good presentation and I walked up to her at the end and I said you know, I'm considering becoming the lab safety officer for a system. What do you think about that? And she said it's an amazing career. I did that and you should think about doing that too. So that's kind of how I decided to take the job my interview, I got the job and it's been quite a wild ride ever since. But it's not a career choice I ever thought I would have been making when I first got into the field of medical technology and laboratory medicine.

Speaker 2: 6:28

Dan, in the years that you've been serving, is there a memory that stands out the most for you, a defining moment maybe?

Speaker 1: 6:38

It was kind of at the beginning because I was lucky enough to have the previous safety officer in the role, still in the facility in the system. So she was able to train me a little bit and I can remember walking through a couple of different laboratories and she would orient you know, here's this lab and here's that. Oh wait, a second, dan. I see this person over there. Their lab code's not buttoned up. Hold on a second. I got to go say something to them and we'd be walking into a different lab. Hold on a second. I got to talk to this person they're chewing gum and by the third or fourth thing that she noticed I thought I can't do this job. I cannot do lab safety. I didn't notice any of those things. I cannot be good in lab safety, and so what I realized over time is that you really have to develop the skills to understand lab safety and to work in lab safety. It just doesn't happen overnight. So if anybody's just beginning in your career in lab safety and you feel like you don't have it, give yourself a chance. Developing what I call safety eyes, being able to see safety issues takes time. It takes practice. I've actually developed job aids to help people do that, because it doesn't come naturally, and knowing that is really key. So this is what this is.

Speaker 1: 7:58

This is kind of what's pivotal in my safety journey, sean, if you will, because I was a lab manager and I didn't see the safety problems in my own lab. But part of the reason was I was busy when I was a lab manager. I didn't have time to really look at those things, but I also wasn't trained to pay attention to those things. So now, as a lab safety officer, I train my managers to be able to see those safety issues that I couldn't see, because I might just be running into the lab to ask Jane, we got a hole on second shift on Thursday, can you feel this? And John's chewing gum and so, and so is wearing the wrong sneakers.

Speaker 1: 8:36

But if I run back to my office as the lab manager and I don't pay attention to those things, I'm really hurting the lab safety culture, because they all think that I don't care about that and it's not true. I, just as the manager, didn't see it and didn't have time to deal with it. But also, at the same time, I'm killing the lab safety culture unintentionally. So I try to talk to my lab managers. That was really pivotal to me. How much I feel for lab managers maybe because I was one.

Speaker 1: 9:05

But I also understand where they're coming from and so I work with them to develop their lab safety skills, if you will, because they don't come naturally to anybody, and a manager just has so much more on their plate, and so I work really hard with them to make sure that they can deal with it too. And, honestly, most of the people I deal with in my academy and things like that, a lot of them are lab managers and oh, by the way, you're in charge of lab safety too and so they don't have the resources at the time, and so that's what I'm really passionate about making them better in lab safety, so that they feel like they can get a handle on that along with the rest of their job.

Speaker 2: 9:44

No, very, very good, Dan. Now, what are you hoping that listeners take away from the podcast? I mean, we're going to be developing a lot of content in the weeks and months to come. What are you hoping that listeners take away?

Speaker 1: 10:03

You know, sean, we've talked about some of the lab safety topics. We've talked about many of them, and you and I don't always see eye to eye on the same topics and there are different ways to look at things, and so I'm hoping that our listeners will get the ability to do their own risk assessment, their own discernment about topics, because it's not always black and white. Sometimes it is when you're looking at the regulations, but sometimes it's not as easy to deal with, and sometimes you're going to get pushback from your staff, and I want listeners to be able to feel that they've got the background and knowledge they need so that they can adequately make a difference in their safety culture in their lab, coach other people and even manage up. If they're the person working in the lab and their leader isn't leading lab safety in the right way, I want them to know that they can still make a difference, and we're going to talk about ways that they can do that, I think, in this podcast.

Speaker 2: 11:05

Now tell the listeners because we have a little bit of time left. Is there anything that you want to share about yourself that's fun or interesting? A fact about yourself that listeners might not know?

Speaker 1: 11:25

Some listeners may know this I have been reading and collecting comic books since I was a little kid and I love the superhero genre, and so I try to incorporate that in some of my talks and some of my presentations as much as I can. I do have a cape that I'll wear from time to time as a self-proclaimed superhero of lab safety. I also someday hope to take a tour of Japan, because I've also been a fan of Japanese monster movies since I was a kid. So I work hard. I have a couple different jobs and I work hard to do it. But I also want to have fun, and if I can incorporate the fun in my life into this, then I do it, and people, I think, will see that from time to time in my writing and in my presentations.

Speaker 1: 12:28

But I have been married for 28 years. I have a daughter who's 27 and we just have had a great. I love my girls and I love the time we spend together and, yeah, just, we spend a lot of time with each other, a lot of downtime. We know how to have a good time as well as work hard. But that's what you know I it's been a lot of work in the lab safety field done over the past many years and I have been really blessed and honored to be a part of it and I, just when I look back on all the things that have happened and that I've done, I can't believe that there has been time in my life to do all of those things, but I work to make sure that those things arethat.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Those are things I can get done in this world and I feel like I have a purpose. I feel like God has put me here for a reason and part of it, and I love the fact that he has helped me to help other people be safe, help other people work safely in these environments where they work, and I'm just blessed in all parts of my life and whatever I can do to help people, that's what I'm going to do.

Speaker 2: 13:57

Well, I think that's a common connection and we'll get this out in the introduction right away. Both Dan and I love God tremendously and we believe together that God has placed us on this earth to serve others and to do exactly what Dan has said to keep people safe. So, dan, I'm so happy you brought him up, because we may mention God a few times. What do you think, dan?

Speaker 1: 14:21

He may come up in God's family work in that order, and that's why we're here.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Absolutely, 100%, 100%, real, quickly. Last thing, dan, you're high and you're low, so I do this with my children around the dinner table, at least when they were at the house. Now they've moved out, most of them. I only have one left, high and low, of serving this profession of safety. What was your high point? What was your low point?

Speaker 1: 14:48

I think I'll start with the low. I think the low is when there are incidents that occur where I am a lab safety officer and somebody gets hurt. I strive very hard to make sure that doesn't happen. But things still happen and I kind of take it personally. I know we always need to be looking at the system first. When there's some sort of an incident and I'm not very happy when somebody gets hurt and we've had a couple incidents in my career that have brought me low I will say and so I work to make sure that those things never happen again.

Speaker 1: 15:34

There are so many highs in this career it'd be hard to pinpoint. It's an honor to be able to serve in so many capacities again, places I never thought my career would take me. Meeting Sean Coffin was a high in my career and getting to know you and to be able to call you friend. But to be able to serve overall, I would say, is the biggest high. To be able to serve to get the word out there about safety. That's certainly not something I could have done by myself. There are a lot of people who helped along the way but again, with that ability and the outreach that I've been able to do that's kept me flying high. I'm able to live out a passion of mine, which is amazing, and that takes me higher every day.

Speaker 2: 16:29

Dan's amazing. I am looking forward to this journey together with you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. God bless each and every one of you. We are the Lab Safety Gurus, dan Scungio and Sean Coffin.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Thank you for letting us do Lab Safety together.