Welcoming visitors to any facility requires multiple departments to work together. The Guide states: “The Institution should provide appropriate education and training to members of research teams — including principal investigators, study directors, research technicians, postdoctoral fellows, students, and visiting scientists — to ensure that they have the necessary knowledge and expertise for the specific animal procedures proposed and the species used1.” The Great Eastern University (GEU)’s Occupational Health and Research Safety departments should be responsible for ensuring safe laboratory visitation. These two groups might need to involve other departments to gather the necessary information to provide a safe visit.
GEU should create an institutional-level visitor policy and a system for managing visitors within the Research Institute with a formal approval process. This new policy should include a form that needs to be filled out to capture data about the visiting scientists; for example, where the visitor will be in the Research Institute, if they will be working with any animals, and if they have any known allergies. For efficiency, this form should also be laden with proper visiting procedures and details about the occupational health and safety risks of entering a lab space in which an animal could be present. Capturing and sharing this basic information back to the Occupational Health and Research Safety departments would allow them to determine what further information the visitor may need before their arrival or if it would be too hazardous for them to enter. GEU’s Legal department also might want to be involved in creating the institutional-level visitor policy, management system, and possible waivers.
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