Veterinary Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Diagnosis-II

Laboratory location & layout

LABORATORY LOCATION AND LAYOUT

Laboratory Location

• As the laboratory will be handling materials hazardous to human and animal health, it must be isolated as much as possible from livestock yards, poultry farms and quarantine stations, and should not function in or near establishments handling healthy animals, food products for human or animal consumption or near vaccine production laboratories.
• Animal houses, garages, workshops, stores, water tanks, residential accommodation, administrative blocks have to be constructed as per the need of ideal microbiological laboratory. Expansion possibilities should also be kept in mind. The building can be arranged in 5 main groups:
  • Administrative / laboratory rooms
  • Decontamination and disposal area
  • Animal house facilities
  • Workshops / stores/garages and
  • Residential accommodation for the staff, hospital, schools, playgrounds, parks, shops etc.
• The laboratory building may be rectangular in blocks, arranged in L, T or U shapes and may be of one or several stories. The temperature, wind velocity, rainfall, temperature fluctuations etc. should also be monitored in the area.

Laboratory layout

• The overall laboratory layout of a CML is determined by the types services provided, the numbers and types of specimens that are processed. A laboratory that provides only patient care or  services are different from those engaged in teaching or research. CML must be divided into different sections according to the way that specimens are handled. (eg. A bench devoted to urine culture, another to blood culture and so on.) or by discipline(eg. A mycology section). The microbiologist should take role in ensuring that the design and layout optimize workflow and efficiency. In a typical hospital or independent laboratory, space is provided for each of the following
  • Specimen receiving.
  • Specimen accessing and processing.
  • Open bench for routine specimen workup.
  • Staining and light microscopy.
  • Media preparation and glass ware washing
  • An isolation room for processing acid fast bacilli and systemic fungi.
  • A separate room for egg inoculation and cell culture.
  • A separate room for specialized molecular based tests.
  • Waste disposal.

Work flow

• Efficient laboratories are designed as the specimens flow in one direction. Traditional microbiologic testing ,  follows a pathway of specimen receipt and plating ,  incubation and isolation of microorganisms, identification of microorganisms , antimicrobial susceptibility testing and result reporting. It is to minimizing the risk of amplicon carryover and specimen contamination.