Incident reporting and biosafety training in a BSL-3 select agent facility

Incident reporting is an important component of any biosafety program. Effective analysis of incident report data can be used to evaluate compliance with standard operating procedures (SOPs) and the safety of different procedures and laboratorians, with the overall goal of preventing future incidents. This study analyzed incident reports from a BSL-3 select agent facility over a 3-year period in conjunction with the number of hours worked in that facility over that same time period. The majority of incidents involved very small consequence events that occurred inside a biosafety cabinet. To a lesser degree, incidents involved compromised personal protective equipment (PPE), broken equipment, and failures to fully adhere to SOPs. A significant relationship was noted between the number of incidents and the number of hours worked in a particular time period (p<0.05). Trainees reported more incidents per hour worked than experienced laboratorians. These incident report analyses were formally presented to the laboratorians who worked in the facility in two training exercises. These trainings served to actively engage the laboratorians in the incident review process and led to the development of more effective mitigation strategies for preventing future incidents. Overall, this analysis serves as a model for incident tracking and analysis that could be adapted by other biocontainment facilities to address their unique incident tracking and analysis needs.