• Question: is your job dangerous in any way. have you ever hurt your self in your job. did u have to go to hospital?

    Asked by cellman to Andrew, Emma, Marianne on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hi cellman,

      My job’s usually pretty safe these days – I don’t work in the lab much at all. And I don’t think I have ever hurt myself badly enough at work to go to hospital. The worst I can remember doing is nearly slicing my finger off with a surgical scalpel – I was using it to open a cardboard box!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Not really. I do have to work with human blood that i get from ‘willing’ donors. This means I have to be vaccinated against the blood-borne virus Hepatitis B because you can’t go testing every single donor. The same applies in hospital work which I do as a doctor. Sometimes you have to do procedures that involve a lot of blood on people who have had trouble with using drugs. These people are more likely to get nasty blood-borne viruses like Hepatitis and HIV so it’s difficult not to worry about transmission of the virus by sticking a needle that’s been in the patient in to yourself by accident or similar.

      In the lab we use a lot of dangerous chemicals but the safety precautions are pretty good so I don’t worry about that too much. We also use genetically modified bugs a bit and it’s important to consider how they might behave if they escaped so that no harm is caused.

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Yeah it can be dangerous!
      We work with a lot of toxic/hazardous/irritant substances – that’s why we have to wear our labcoats, specs and gloves etc. to stop it getting on our skin, inhaling it and so on.
      Also when we work with viruses you have to be very careful not to get contamination. we don’t want to infect ourselves with things!! Although we rarely work with human viruses here.

      The main thing is that as long as you’re sensible, you can avoid getting hurt.

      We’ve had a few instances of people accidentally cutting themselves with scalpels and things like that. Someone burnt their hand with a very hot solution the other day…

      Actually, we had two hospitalisations last Friday.
      We had our summer party and did some school-style sports day events. One person in my lab had to go have his knee looked at because he fell over during pass-the-balloon and one of the surgeons went to get his shoulder in a sling, he ruptured a ligament falling off a space hopper!!!

      See, science is fun.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi cellman. In my previous job as an occupational hygienist (I used to measure people’s exposure to hazardous substances and noise), I used to have to go to sea on Royal Navy ships and if they were moored out in the harbour, the only way sometimes to get aboard was by a small boat and then onto a pontoon and up a rope ladder! It was a bit scary for me to do this but for the service personnel it was part of everyday life and they used to winch my cases of equipment up for me. Another job meant I had to climb up a dockside crane to view the working conditions of the crane drivers. It was a long way to climb!

      In the same job, I used to have to go into lots of workshops and there is always some sort of risk associated with this as they contain industrial machinery, paint spray booths, glue guns etc and it was a new environment to me. I always had to meet the shop floor supervisor at the entrance and they would escort me to the place I needed to work. I had risk assessed the process before hand so I always had my personal protective equipment with me.:)

      I

Comments