Essential Safety Sheet in University Hospital and Healthcare Laboratories: A Comprehensive Evaluation Study with...

Safety information in hospital laboratories is often fragmented or difficult to retrieve under time pressure. We developed an Essential Safety Sheet (ESS) to present critical, task-level safety information immediately and evaluated its effectiveness on safety performance and incidents.

We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation across eight university hospital laboratories from March 2023 to August 2024, including a 13-month interrupted time series with a concurrent difference-in-differences comparison between ESS and control laboratories (pre-implementation 6 months, implementation month, post-implementation 6 months). Primary outcomes were (1) emergency escalation accuracy, (2) information search time for task-critical items and (3) laboratory incident rates. Segmented regression models with robust Standard errors estimated level and slope changes; parallel trends were assessed pre-intervention. Multiple comparisons across the three primary outcomes were controlled for using the Bonferroni correction. Qualitative usability feedback was analyzed to contextualize the quantitative effects.

ESS implementation was associated with significant improvements in information search time and reductions in incident rates that were sustained over the post-implementation period in the ESS laboratories relative to the controls. Escalation accuracy improved in direction but did not reach statistical significance after multiple comparison correction (Bonferroni-adjusted p = 0.150). Findings were robust to the sensitivity analyses of model specification and pre-trend assumptions.

A concise, task-level safety sheet can enhance the speed of safety-critical information retrieval and contribute to lower incident rates in hospital laboratories. While escalation accuracy showed only a favorable trend after correction, overall results support ESS as low-cost, scalable interventions to strengthen laboratory safety performance. Future studies should test generalizability across more sites and tasks to assess longer-term sustainability.