Stakeholder meetings

The Task Force solicits the thoughtful and scholarly input from the Stanford Community on the current status of the Safety Culture at Stanford and how it might be improved. Principal investigator and bench researcher input into the research laboratory safety culture review and evaluation process is critical to assure full accounting of all viewpoints by the task force. To maximize the opportunity for contributing to this process, town hall style meetings have been set up to provide a forum for such information gathering directly. Below is the schedule of meetings held to date, as well as future meetings. All stakeholders in the research laboratory safety culture are welcome to attend any of these meetings. If you have not yet attended one of these meetings, the Task Force invites you to do so at an upcoming meeting on the dates noted.

TASK FORCE STAKEHOLDER MEETINGS:

Upcoming Laboratory Safety Culture Survey:

In addition to these stakeholder meetings, laboratory safety culture surveys for faculty-PIs and bench researchers are being finalized and are expected to be released and promoted the week of February 17th. The Task Force asks faculty-PIs and all researchers to be on the lookout for an e-mail announcing the availability of the Stanford Research Laboratory Safety Culture Survey and also to take time (est. 10-15 min) from their busy schedules to complete the survey which seeks your individual opinions on the status of the research laboratory safety culture at Stanford. The results of this anonymous survey will add to the information gained from stakeholder input and will provide additional data for evaluating the overall perception of safety culture in research laboratories at Stanford, a core objective of the Stanford Task Force.

Attributes of a Positive Research Laboratory Safety Culture at Stanford University (draft for comment)

It is important to have a common set of safety culture attributes (principles, characteristics and traits) that describe a strong, positive safety culture across the broad range of research laboratory activities. These attributes describe patterns of interaction, group dynamics, communications and behaviors that appropriately emphasize lab safety, particularly in “goal conflict” situations (e.g., research production vs. safety, research schedule vs. safety, and cost of effort vs. safety). Attributes are kept at a sufficiently high level of detail to ensure that they apply across the range of research activities and myriad types of relationships [horizontal relationships (i.e., peer to peer researchers, individual researchers within lab group, researchers to safety representatives, etc.) and vertical relationships (researcher to faculty-PI/lab manager, researcher to EH&S, faculty-PI to Department Chair, and faculty-PI/lab manager to EH&S)] that exist among persons and groups engaged in academic research laboratory activities.

Your comment and input is solicited on whether these attributes appropriately represent the best practices of a positive, strong research laboratory safety culture. Please use the comment section of the task force website to provide feedback and input on the draft document attached below.