Lab.1
Laboratory safety
The workers in microbiology lab. Are in exposure to danger of infection from clinical sample and culture, as well as non infective danger such as fire, toxic substances and other. Microorganism vary in their ability to infect individual and cause disease. Some microorganisms are harmless whereas the others may responsible for production of disease with mild symptoms, the other organisms can cause serious disease with severe symptoms.
General instructions and precautions in microbiology lab.:
To prevent contamination of your clothes always wear lab. coat during the lab.
Sterilize the bench before and after the work in the lab.
Use rubber gloves and nose mask for all works with infective material.
All clinical lab. should contain at least one type of microbiology safety cabinet.
Keep your finger in short forms.
Never eat, smoke or drink in the lab.
Don’t touch your eyes, mouth, nose, during the work.
Don’t use your mouth for sucking solution but use sterilized pipette, if you were obligate, a cotton plug (put in the end of the pipette) is used for this purpose.
Never remove any culture or requirement from lab. to the outside.
Avoid pouring any of bacterial culture in the lab. sink.
Descent the contaminated material and all cultures into a container provided for this purpose and sterilize.
Wash your hands with detergent and water before leaving the lab.
Collection of clinical specimens:
Specimen for bacteriological investigation should be forwarded as soon as possible to the laboratory in a sterile containers. Each container must have the name of patient and from whom the specimens is submitted.
1. Swabs:
Suitable for taking specimens from the sites having mucous membrane such as nose, throat, eye, ear, vagina, wounds, ulcers… etc.
Swab is a cotton-wood or synthetic fiber mounted on a thin wire or stick. The swab is either touched or rubbed on the surface of infection and kept in a sterile container.
2. Urine:
For small quantities of urine e.g. For diagnosis of most cases of UTI, the midstream urine is collected in wide mouthed sterile container. For large quantities complete early morning specimens is collected in wide mouthed screw capped bottle.
3. Blood, for serological test:
Blood is taken from the vein and submitted (without anti coagulant) in special glass or plastic container.
4. Blood for culture:
Under sterile condition about 5-10 ml of blood is drawn by vein puncture and transferred to blood culture bottle containing 5 ml of broth culture.
Various anti-coagulants may be added to the broth. The blood is injected by the syringe needle through a hole in the container.
5. Pus:
Abscess and wound pus can be collected by aspiration from lesions by a sterilized syringe and needle.
For the collection of special fluids: e.g. Pleural fluid and peritoneal fluid, screw-cap container is used with addition of 0.3 ml of 20% sodium citrate to the container.