Microbiology laboratories weighting the risks with the AHP method

OHS Law No. 6331 was enacted to prevent occupational accidents and occupational diseases in all workplaces, regardless of public and private discrimination, and to create a safe and healthy working environment. While health services fulfill the task of protecting and improving human health, employees in the sector are exposed to various occupational hazards and risks. Therefore, effective OHS practices aiming to protect the health and safety of healthcare workers are of vital importance. The main purpose of the study is to identify hazards in the microbiology laboratory, which is the most important place in terms of biological hazards in hospitals classified as very dangerous, to evaluate the risk with FMEA, to create a plan and policy by listing the regulatory preventive activities in the presence of employees by using AHP from decision making methodologies. In the study, preanalytical and analytical processes in the microbiology laboratory were evaluated. According to the results of the risk analysis performed with FMEA, the parameters with RPN values above 100 were categorized. In order to ensure the control of biological risks, a total of 18 sub-criteria were created from 3 main criteria and 6 sub-criteria related to each main criterion. In this context, in order to ensure the control of biological risks, AHP, one of the Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods, was used by brainstorming with a group of 3 people consisting of a specialist doctor, an occupational safety specialist and a laboratory worker. With AHP, the importance levels of the main criteria were determined first. Accordingly, control in the environment ranked first among the main criteria with 47.4%, administrative control ranked second with 37.6%, and control in the employee ranked last. The results obtained in this thesis show that proactive approaches to occupational health and safety play an important role in preventing biological risks.