The Lab Safety Gurus
Discover the secrets to enhancing laboratory safety without the hassle of navigating complex regulations and modifying established practices.
Tune in to the enlightening discussions led by the knowledgeable Dan the Lab Safety Man and infectious disease behaviorist Sean Kaufman. Together, they explore a wide range of lab safety subjects on a weekly basis.
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The Lab Safety Gurus
Redefining Glove Removal Protocols in Laboratory Environments
When it comes to laboratory safety, the smallest steps can have the biggest impact—discover how with our special guests, Sean Kaufman and Dan Scungio, as we unveil the Beaking Method for doffing gloves. Developed in response to the harrowing realities of lab-acquired infections and the stark lessons from GloGerm experiments, this episode is a deep dive into a technique that's reshaping safety protocols. Hear about its critical role during the Ebola crisis and the roadblocks we faced in implementing it across healthcare settings, despite its undeniable effectiveness in reducing contamination risks.
Our conversation takes an instructive turn, highlighting the paramount importance of precision in personal protective equipment removal. We'll guide you through the nuances of the "beaking method" and its varied reception in the field, dwelling on the challenges of altering ingrained behaviors for safer outcomes. Sean lends his expertise as we discuss the method's correct application in high-stakes environments and direct you to authentic demonstrations of the technique. Listen closely for an enlightening dialogue that not only educates but also empowers healthcare and laboratory professionals to safeguard themselves with confidence.
You can view the Beaking Method at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfGivTv3wbc.
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.
Speaker 1:Sean Kaufman, I want to get a little bit personal with you today and me, if that's okay.
Speaker 2:Are you okay with that? Oh, absolutely. Now, this is you know again. For the audience here. This is unscripted. This is just a good conversation between us. What are we going to talk about today, dan?
Speaker 1:It's yeah, it's totally unscripted, but this has been something that's been on my mind and I want to try to get your take on both aspects of it, and I sort of titled this in my head, missing the Mark, with the Beaking Method. Now, for those of you not in the know and Sean definitely correct me if I misspeak about it the beaking method is a method of doffing gloves that Sean Kaufman created, invented back when you were working with. Maybe it predates your work with Ebola, I'm not sure, but it is a proven better way to doff your gloves in the laboratory or any setting than the traditional glove-in-glove method that is kind of taught pervasively. Is that a good summary of what it is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. If it's okay with you, let's talk a little bit about why or how it came to fruition. Does that sound good, dan? Yeah, so many years ago, when I was at Emory University this is like 20 years ago one of the things that we would have people do as part of that program is remove their gloves with GloGerm on the outside of their gloves, and we would consistently see GloGerm on people's hands, meaning they were removing contaminated gloves and contaminating their hands while removing those gloves, and that really bothered us, and we didn't really spend much time focusing on this and I'll get to what I mean by that but it really bothered us, and so what we decided to do was we spent a week in a dark room with a lot of go-jerm and a lot of gloves, and we developed a process that and it wasn't just me, it was Lee Alderman and Henry Matthews, these were my mentors. So it was Lee Alderman and Henry Matthews, these were my mentors, so it was Lee Alderman, henry Matthews, myself and we spent a whole week devising a way of removing gloves that if we knew someone could do it, we watched them and if they followed those steps, we could guarantee that they would have no contamination on their hands. Now, at that time, dan, remember, the stats are still very clear 80% of laboratory acquired infections, meaning infections picked up in a lab, and actually 80% of healthcare associated infections, come from unknown events, meaning they're not spills, they're not needle sticks. We don't know how the people got sick, and so the reality is that we wanted to devise a process that would ensure that, when you removed your gloves, you weren't going to get sick as a result of removing your gloves, and so that was phase one.
Speaker 2:Let's fast forward 10 years. 10 years later, ebola happened. Let's fast forward 10 years. 10 years later, ebola happened. And when Ebola happened, many people out there may remember, but those two nurses in Texas got sick with Ebola, and I had a chance to work on the court case of Nina Pham. She sued the hospital and I had a court case. I had a chance to work with her as an expert witness and to see how she doffed her gear and we put GloDrum all over her gloves and I had her doff, and then I looked at her hands and something struck me, dan, and this was the big issue.
Speaker 2:Now, keep in mind that Ebola is spread through blood-borne fecal-oral routes of transmission, which means that if you have cuts and tears on your skin cuts and tears on your skin around the cuticle areas and you remove your gloves and you contaminate that area with whatever you have on your gloves, you could actually be exposing yourself to the disease. And both Nina and Amber got sick from Duncan Duncan was the gentleman that died. Both of them got sick. Those two nurses got sick. There was no known spills, no known needle sticks, nothing meaning some way. Somehow Ebola had to go into their bodies. And 10 years after we developed the beaking method, dan, I started to focus on exactly where we were seeing the glow germ. And you know where we saw most of the glow germ. Well, you actually do know because you've been trained in this. We saw it around the cuticle areas, where the tears are, and that really alarmed me. So that's kind of why we focus on that beaking method.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was frightening to see that with the glow germ, just how bad the glove-in-glove method is and where the potential exposure exists. So this is clearly important. It's clearly the best way to do this. And so here's part one of what I wanted to talk about, personal to me and, I guess, my organization. So, sean, you were so kind to come to our organization, as we have you do every year, to come to our organization, as we have you do every year, and teach my safety coaches, where I work, the beaking method.
Speaker 1:And so we stood in a line. We had everybody standing in line, we were showing people how to do it. We had the glow germ just to show what happens if you do it wrong, and all of that. And you know, everybody thought this is fantastic and this makes total sense. And so I went to the head of our infection control in our organization and I said you know, would it be okay if we taught this as the standard for doffing in laboratory services? And it took a while for them to answer and they said, sure, that's fine, but they didn't grasp onto it and they didn't you know, they didn't make it policy or anything like that.
Speaker 1:We are allowed to make it policy in lab services. We haven't done that and I'll go into why in just a minute. But you know, I just I feel like part of this is so where it missed the mark for us is we did not.
Speaker 1:we didn't complete the journey here, so it's been a couple years since you've done that we got permission but we've never gone beyond that and there are various reasons for that. One of the reasons is we in lab services in our organization don't own a glove donning and doffing procedure. It's system-wide. We don't own that.
Speaker 1:And while we're allowed to probably create our own. We just haven't made it official education in that time, and so I feel like we lost it. I feel like we lost the momentum. We got agreement that it was good, but the rest of the hospital is not going to go with it and so far we haven't mandated it or made it a required part of our training and lab services.
Speaker 1:So we missed the mark there. I don't know if you've had that sort of situation happen in other places. I know I have seen you teach it. I know you've gone to other countries and taught it and have people send you a video of how to do it to make sure they're doing it correctly. And also I know that you have specific thoughts and opinions on how training should be done In the world. Unfortunately that we live in many hospital associations or organizations is that training. A lot of it's not done that way. We don't have an official donning and doffing training that's live in front of people. Now, that said, we're changing that in our organization. We have somebody in charge of education now, which we didn't used to have, and we're trying to get in front of new lab employees as they come on board. But you know, in an organization of 900 laboratorians it's a little hard. It has been historically hard to do, but we're finally finding a way and so I'm hoping to bring the beaking method back to the table.
Speaker 2:So I just want to. I guess, I feel like.
Speaker 1:I owe you a public apology, sean. You did all that work. You taught us that we moved ahead a little bit, but we didn't really we haven't really finished the journey and it's taken a long time.
Speaker 2:You don't, dan. Yeah, dan, there's no public apology. First and foremost, this is one of those things where and I'm going to invite all our listeners to really kind of understand it as well Look, I do believe it is the organization's job to protect its employees. I do and quite honestly, dan, it makes me very sad because we can clearly demonstrate that not taking your gloves off properly puts you at risk and people will say, well, yeah, but you wash your hands afterwards no, no, no, no, if you inoculate. I want you to keep this in mind.
Speaker 2:When we watch people remove their gloves inappropriately, they literally are pushing what is on the gloves into those cuticles on their fingernails as they're removing those gloves, meaning they're, like, self-inoculating.
Speaker 2:And even though it is the responsibility of organizations to protect its staff, it's also the responsibility of each and every individual to own safety for themselves.
Speaker 2:And the fact that you had me show up and the fact that you allowed for me to demonstrate the beaking method, it's up to the employees on whether or not they want to use I call it like self-defense. There will be some people that say, nope, I don't need this, and there will be some people that say, yes, I do, and I'm always a big believer that we're not training for every day, we're training for the time, for example, when COVID comes, and there may be a time when we do face an agent that doesn't kill less than 1% of the people it infects. It could be like MERS, where it kills over 30% of the people it infects and so I believe that every single day is a practice day and you allow for an opportunity for staff to learn a skill, should they ever need it. They know it exists and they can practice it and they can tap into it. So you know, dan, you don't owe me an apology. I appreciate the opportunity to teach and get the word out.
Speaker 1:Well, I just want you to know we haven't given up, we're not done pushing it and we're going to get it right here. We're going to get it right eventually. It's just taking a lot longer than I thought it would. The second piece of this I'm sure is more personal to you, and that is that there are outside organizations and I'm not bashing anybody here, particularly the CDC who has sort of latched onto the beaking method sort of, and I think they missed the mark as well, because if you watch the video that they have online and I'm not even sure it's still up, I haven't looked in a while they sort of haphazardly took the beaking method which is your method, yours and Alderman's and Matthew's, and they didn't do it right.
Speaker 1:Can you expound on that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate. Wow, you're making my heart smile because I have to tell you, the CDC complimented us by at least acknowledging the existence of the Beaky Method and in fact, if you go to Google Scholar, following the Ebola outbreak, there were a couple papers that were published on that glove removal process as well, even using that name. It is kind of neat to have someone, dan, like you, recognize that CDC not only has used it, but also they botched it. The beaking method that they do demonstrate is not the beaking method that we teach, and you have to keep this in mind. This is very important.
Speaker 2:I'm a behaviorist and you know that, dan, and listeners they may not know what that means, but let me explain what it means.
Speaker 2:It means that I focus primarily on behavior and believe that good behavior that's consistent will produce the same consistent outcome, which means that part of the beaking process is making sure that every single step is done properly is, and if it's not done properly, it's not going to produce consistent results. And so when you look at what CDC has put out there and compare it to what we have taught the way of doing it and doing it well and doing it effectively, when you look at the way that CDC has demonstrated it. It isn't the way that we would teach it. In fact, I could clearly walk people through a video and demonstrate that this is where you would see contamination, because, believe it or not, over the last 20 years we've been watching people remove gloves and we kind of can predict very easily where we're going to see that. But the point is is that at least it is a compliment that CDC does acknowledge the beaking method. I just I do wish that they would do it, in my opinion, the right way.
Speaker 1:Since we did develop it, I would say that we can determine what way is right and wrong. So, yeah, I just want to make sure people realize that and again, it's not a dig against the CDC. I know that these things happen. I know sometimes how they happen and it's unfortunate. Is there a place that people can go to? Is it on YouTube? Where can people see the correct method if they were interested in it, especially after hearing today's podcast?
Speaker 2:Well, if you go to just Google and you type in the beaking method, there's going to be several things that come up. Texas Tech, actually, is the first thing that pops up, and they do that. But there's under the videos. You'll see videos from me, sean Kaufman. You'll see I have several videos that you can watch and there's a lot of. There is a you know these have, you know they've been watched by a lot of people.
Speaker 2:So they pop up and so, again, I will caution you if my name is not associated with it, I would probably stay away from it because there are people that do use the beaking method. But if you type in beaking method with my name, sean Kaufman, there are several videos that demonstrate how to properly remove the glove using the beaking method. So, again, yeah, dan, thank you for bringing this up. It's near and dear to my heart, as you know, because, again, remember majority of the ways that people get sick in labs and even in hospitals, we just don't know, and I'm convinced it's from inappropriate doffing of contaminated personal protective equipment, and so if we can teach people better doffing strategies, then we can, in my opinion, protect more people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. It's huge. It's a huge issue and it's a huge risk in laboratories doffing and, like you say, in health care in general. But doffing contaminated PPE and we do this every day in labs. It's really critical that you do it the right way. And gloves you know so commonly used, we need to make sure we're doffing those correctly as well.
Speaker 1:So, again, if you're looking for the beaking method online and you want to see what this is, it is amazing. People and I, sean, I just want to thank you for bringing it to the world, because it was an amazing that you took the time, that you cared enough about people using gloves and potentially getting infected that you came up with this in this modern day and age. That's to me that's incredible. So, thank you. Dna, that's to me that's incredible. But so thank you. But also to everybody listening, make sure you that when you look it up, you're looking it up and that it's associated directly with Shawn Kaufman. Again, you can google it.
Speaker 1:Some of the things that came up when I googled it with what is bird beak removal okay, that's not what we're talking about, but the the beaking method, and make sure Sean Kaufman's name is associated with it and you're looking at the right way to do it. Be safe, everybody out there. Thank you again, sean, for talking about this today with me and for again for bringing this to the world. It's an amazing thing that you've done and it's important. So hopefully, everybody out there, you'll learn to use it and you'll learn to do it the right way. Thanks everybody.
Speaker 2:Thank you, dan we are the lab safety gurus dan scungio and sean kaufman thank you for letting us do lab safety together.