The Lab Safety Gurus
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The Lab Safety Gurus
Normalized Deviance in Laboratory Settings
What happens when unsafe practices become the norm in your lab? Join us as we reflect on the tragic Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and how it unveiled the concept of "normalized deviance" — where organizations become desensitized to risky behaviors. We share our own memories of that devastating day and draw parallels to everyday lab environments, stressing the grave dangers of neglecting personal protective equipment (PPE) and bypassing engineering controls. By highlighting shocking examples, such as lab workers suffering severe chemical burns from washing with microchem, we aim to raise awareness about this critical issue and advocate for proactive safety measures to prevent such catastrophic outcomes.
Promoting a robust safety culture goes beyond just following protocols; it requires open communication and consistent vigilance. We discuss how external audits can unearth normalized unsafe practices and the importance of creating an environment where safety concerns can be voiced without fear of retribution. Through the touching story of a father's daily calls to his children, we underscore the power of consistent communication in personal and professional spheres. Tune in to hear how these lessons can fortify your lab's safety and foster stronger, enduring connections with your colleagues and community.
Welcome to the Lab Safety Gurus Podcast. I'm Dan Scungio.
Speaker 2:And I'm Sean Kaufman, and together we're providing safety insights for those working in laboratory settings, doing safety together Sean Kaufman. Hey Dan, it's been a while. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great. How are you? Good, good, Good. I have a question for you. Do you remember where you were when the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred?
Speaker 2:Seventh grade English class and a gentleman walked in from the principal's office His name was Steven and he said the shuttle just blew up and the teacher actually yelled at him. I mean literally yelled at him, and told him to go back to the principal's office. His name was Steven and he said the shuttle just blew up and the teacher actually yelled at him. I mean literally yelled at him and told him to go back to the principal's office. He's like I'm serious. He started to cry, I'm serious. And she turned on the TV. And literally, at the moment she turned on the TV, it was blowing up and, yeah, we were dismissed from class. We were dismissed from school. Actually, we were sent home early that day. Yeah, I do remember. How about you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was in high school. I guess you're just a young pup. I was in my senior year of high school and we were not. School was out. I don't remember the reason. We were setting up for a band concert, though. I was at school and we were arranging the chairs and we had a big concert coming up and we were setting up for it. It was going to be that evening and some kid came in and said this face should have looked. We all thought he was kidding and then we all went to the TV there and saw it. I remember it very vividly.
Speaker 1:You know, when that happened, they did a lot of studying about why this happened. How did this happen? We all know there were problems with the O-rings about why this happened. How did this happen? We all know there were problems with the O-rings. But they did a study and there was a lady named Diane Vaughn and she coined the phrase normalized deviance when she was doing the study about what happened with NASA and the Challenger shuttle disaster and she said that there's a phenomenon that occurs when people within an organization become so insensitive to deviant practices that it no longer feels like it is wrong. And that's what she said normalized deviance is.
Speaker 1:You know I've talked about this for the past few years regarding lab safety, because I don't know about you, sean, but I see a lot of normalized deviant behaviors in the laboratory, things like not wearing PPE or using personal electronic devices or not using engineering controls when you need them and it's dangerous but it no longer feels wrong, and so this is one of the things I've had to learn as a safety officer over the years. So we know it doesn't feel wrong. We also know that the people, when you see somebody doing something like that in a lab, that they're not doing it on purpose or with an evil intent. We have to remember how it feels to them in some situations, and so their intentions are not bad, but the results are potentially disastrous. That's what scares me the most about normalized deviance.
Speaker 1:And we do have lab accidents, we have lab explosions, we have lab exposures, all kinds of lab issues that occur. Of course, a lot of them aren't reported. You know lab incidents and acquired infections and things like that are all underreported, but they're happening and there is potential right now in this country in our labs, of even worse things happening and that's pretty scary to me. But it's been normalized. It's such a bad thing, and so I wanted to bring this up to you. Because you understand human behavior better than anybody. I know why does this happen and what can we do about it.
Speaker 2:It's a good question. I you know, when we talk about laboratories, I'm very familiar with the normalized deviance. I like to call them normalized nonconformances because you know they're normalized non-conformities, and I think you know. If you break that word up into two, let's talk about what normalizing is. Anybody, dan, of course you know I'm sure you've been on an airplane recently. So let's talk a little bit about the process of normalizing.
Speaker 2:You know, the only two times you really get an idea of how fast you're going on a plane and I'm talking about feeling how fast you go is when you take off and when you land. But before you land you actually have normalized. The environment is normal. You don't think you're going 300, 400 miles an hour, you don't even think that. But when the tires hit that ground and for the first time when you go to land, you get a sense of just how fast you were going.
Speaker 2:So normalizing is just a it's a human element. It's it's it's adapting to the environment, um, it's, it's really, in essence, going along with the flow. If you stuck your head out the window, obviously you would know real fast how fast you were going. Um, so I think it's human, it's just part of human nature to assimilate, to adapt and to really try to normalize yourself within a particular environment. Now comes the question is the environment producing habits of excellence, or is the environment producing some habits that may increase overall risk and have just accepted those because, well, either a, they know no better or b, they don't have any other perspective. Um, so yeah, go ahead, go ahead yeah, this is.
Speaker 1:This is the other part about normalized deviance that bothers me because because it's an unintentional acceptance of a lower standard. If it is indeed the culture, let's say, we got a new person walking into the lab and they just see people doing those things and that is the culture. So they begin conforming to that culture. We are automatically working in a lower standard, and that's. I don't like that for laboratory either.
Speaker 2:No, I don't. And you know, one thing that is frustrating as a consultant, dan and I know you are as well is sometimes consultants are seen as seagulls. You know, they swoop in, they crap and then they fly away and they've just left a lot of crap behind and there's negative connotation to that. But this is important. I think people need to hear it. I'll give you an example of normalized deviance or normalized nonconformities, in my opinion. I went and I did.
Speaker 2:I like to do the gloat germ exercises and that means that I get to see people's hands. I'm not going to say I get to see them intimately, but I'm looking at their hands. Well, I went to a laboratory once and everyone's hands not only were they severely cracked, but intimately, but I, you know, I'm looking at their hands. Well, I went to a laboratory once and everyone's hands not only were they severely cracked, but they were chemically burned. Like you can see under the white light, there are chemical burns on their skin, every single person in the lab. And so I asked them. I said what are you doing? They were washing their hands in microchem, dan. What? Yes, in microchem. It was the norm of that lab and there were six to seven people that for six, seven months had been literally dipping their hands in microchem, their naked hands, in microchem, to disinfect their skin.
Speaker 2:And so sometimes, when you bring a consultant in from the outside, I'm not promoting, please. No, I, we do this podcast and I'm not promoting. Please know we do this podcast, dan, and I do it for free. We're not, you know, we don't want to self-promote, although it would be nice to get calls. But the point I'm trying to get at is that sometimes bringing somebody in from the outside will actually help you identify things that your staff or your culture has readily accepted as normal. They've normalized it, but it's not something that's decreasing risk.
Speaker 1:In fact, it's increasing your overall risk. Yeah, where I work as a full-time lab safety officer, we have outside groups come in and do audits CAP audits, the College of American Pathology and they come and they do a full audit of all our labs every two years and I like that. I want those outside eyes coming in looking at things, because I know that this is my home base and I may not be able to see things because of my normalized deviance or my acceptance of what goes on here every day. So, yeah, absolutely, having that set of outside eyes looking in is, if you can arrange that somehow, whether by a consultant or other, means you should do that. You should have somebody come from another hospital or another lab and come in and take a look like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. So now we got to turn it around. Right, we've got to turn it around. We've got a problem, we know there's some normalized deviance and so this is terminology I use, sean, but I like to say we need to normalize safety and I think there's some specific ways to do that because we definitely need to turn it around if we're seeing those practices in our labs and again there are lots of reasons for those things happening but we have to get past that.
Speaker 1:We have to move past that and make it possible to practices in our labs and again, there are lots of reasons for those things happening. But we have to get past that. We have to move past that and make it possible to normalize safety. One thing we need to do to help that happen is to be able to talk about our problems openly, transparently, without any sort of retribution or problems. We need to bring up our safety issues, our safety events, and we need to be talking about them.
Speaker 1:I think that's one of the biggest reasons we get normalized deviance. You know people think safety is boring and oh, I don't want to go over biosafety again, or chemical safety, blah, blah, blah. No, we have to go over it constantly. We have to repeat the topics and we have to really talk about the consequences of unsafe behaviors. I really don't think we talk about them enough because I don't think people understand what those consequences can be. So we sort of have to normalize safety by talking about consequences and talking about the failures we have in our own labs and be able to talk about those openly, without any sort of kind of retribution.
Speaker 2:No, and I agree, dan, and one of the things that I find frustrating in this industry is this construct that safety is boring and it's not, and I think I don't ever want to promote this increased aggression and projecting what safety is. But listen, safety is responsible for keeping promises, promises that you've made. If you're working in a laboratory, you've made a promise to go home safely at the end of every day to see your family, to go to the ones that love you the most, to see your family, to go to the ones that love you the most. You've made a promise to those you work with that you're going to do things to make sure that not only do you stay safe, but they stay safe as well. You've made a promise for the community in which you're working in, whether it's a hospital or it's a research lab in the middle of a neighborhood or whatever it is. You've made a promise to contain what you're working with and keep it in the lab, not making other people sick.
Speaker 2:And if you are working with agents that can make animals sick or plants, you've made a promise to keep the community safe and the environment as well. These are huge promises, and those promises to keep those promises. It's going to require, like you said, not only excellence in behavior, but when hiccups do occur and when mistakes do happen, we've got to learn from them and be in a process of continuous improvement, not failure frozen in time, which is that normalized deviance. You're going to have to continuously improve and make sure that the promises that you made to yourself, your loved ones, the families, the communities, the environment you're going to have to make changes to make sure that those promises are fulfilled.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I love that philosophy, because it helps you to think not only about your coworkers, but about your loved ones and whoever's at home that you care about as well. That's what we should be thinking about. And so you know, we need to bring safety Obviously. It needs to be in our orientation when we bring new people on board. It needs to be part of the immediate training. You don't wait.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how many labs I've walked into and I've talked to some people who are newer. They've been there maybe a month or two and they still haven't completed their safety education for that lab. What that's crazy talk. That needs to be one of the first things we do. And I know, sean, that you've talked about this before, but safety needs to be written into our procedures as well. So if I have to have a written procedure for how to run a CBC on a patient, for example and maybe you know I need to pop the top of the tube and look for clots there should be a step in there talking about using face protection before that happens, so that it's you know the safety is in all of your procedures, woven in like a thread, so that we've normalized safety in all aspects of the lab.
Speaker 2:Well, I think safety should also be in performance reviews. I'm sorry, I think a specific metric should be included in performance reviews. Dan, if I were to ask, if I were to think where my understanding of my greatest challenge in normalized dev involved in the screening, hiring, sometimes removal of individuals that pose certain risks to laboratory environments. These aren't normal jobs. These are jobs that are technical. They require individuals that can assimilate to the environments in which they work in.
Speaker 2:And when you hire someone and that person is not a fit, if that person is not properly mitigated or controlled, it can destroy a lab culture almost on a weekly basis, and I just see that. I think it's sad. I think HR needs to get involved. It's not just a sit back. Let's hire someone, screen somebody, hire them and put them in the lab and keep our fingers crossed. I really think there's some big issues when we talk about how do we get the right people in the lab to fit into the culture and to make sure that what we've done in the lab to maintain a culture of safety is preserved is preserved, and how we hire and bring somebody on board and train them, like you said, with safety that matters.
Speaker 1:We have to establish priorities and expectations right away. Yep, absolutely, and I have to agree with you as a former manager of a lab. Yeah, hr doesn't speak the same language necessarily as people in the lab, and so it's really up to lab leadership to be enforcing that safety and maintaining it in the way that the lab needs, because you can't expect those outside departments like HR to understand it the same way. Yeah, so we have to be telling safety stories. Start every meeting, every huddle with a safety story. Talk about positive things that happened, but if something went wrong, talk about those too. When you get to the point in your lab when you can talk about near misses, you're in great shape when it comes to talking about safety stories and errors, and your culture is getting better and better all the time, if you can get to that point. So make safety fun. Use safety eyes pictures. Have some games around lab safety. When you can do it, do whatever you can to promote lab safety in your department.
Speaker 2:Hey, dan, I want to talk about one last thing. I know we're running out of time, but I want to talk about one last thing, one of the things that I mean when you said normalizing deviance. I have a story. It's a personal one, it's a family story. You know, I love my family very, very much my children and my parents and I think you know that I've always loved them very, very much. But one thing that I did over three years ago is I would talk to my brother maybe once every two to three months. I talked to my parents once a week, maybe once every two weeks, and my kids are gone, and I would talk to my kids maybe once every three to four days.
Speaker 2:And three years ago, a gentleman his name is Jim died and I went to his funeral. I don't like funerals, dan, I really don't, but I went to his funeral because I liked him a tremendous amount. I respected him. He was just a wonderful human being and his three children got up during his eulogy and his three kids, they said all together, each and every one of them talked about it. They said you know, the one thing I'm going to miss most about my dad is that, no matter where he was in the world, no matter what he was doing, every single day he called us and no matter if it was in the world, no matter what he was doing, every single day he called us and no matter if it was a 15-second phone call or a 30-second phone call. He always let us know that he loved them and that he checked in with us every day.
Speaker 2:And I left that day, dan. I left that day just floored and changed something three years ago, floored and changed something three years ago. And I now talk to my parents and I talk to my kids and I talk to my brother every single day. And in making that simple change, and just making that simple change, the relationships that I've had with my family have grown and strengthened in ways I could have never imagined. I thought talking to them randomly every once in a while was normal, and then I heard and I saw something from the outside and I made that change and, wow, did it have a huge difference? So I think normalized deviance is something that we experience not only at the workplace but even at home.
Speaker 1:And it's something we should definitely consider. That is. That's a lesson for everyone, sean. I love that, love that. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:We are the Lab Safety Gurus Dan Scungio and Sean Kaufman.
Speaker 1:Thank you for letting us do lab safety together.