4. If you could repeat the lab and make it better, what would you do differently and why?
There are always ways that labs can be improved. Now that you are a veteran of this lab and have experience with the procedure, offer some advice to the next scientist about what you suggest and why. Your answer should be at least two to three sentences in length.
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Answers & Comments
Answer:
Explanation:
1. Human resources
Having the right people in the right roles is necessary for maximum effectiveness in all workplaces. Everyone needs to know the scope of their roles and have the education and experience to carry them out without too much additional learning. However, it is also important that they continue to learn and gain experience and remain motivated to achieve their goals.
The leadership in the lab needs to make sure that the staff have everything required to carry out their roles and preserve high levels of morale. They will also need to maintain the cohesiveness of the team and good communication between lab members. Read more advice about how best to manage a lab here.
2. Equipment optimisation
Having the best possible equipment in the lab will help to increase productivity and experimental quality while limiting waste.
Equipment should always be maintained as instructed by the manufacturer and kept in a clean, fully working condition. By doing this, you should stop it from breaking down during an experiment and wasting samples and other consumables.
Place fixed equipment in such a position that it doesn’t require too much space, is easy to set up and use, and all other items needed for the experiment are easily accessible.
It’s also worth noting that buying the cheapest available equipment may end up being more expensive in the long run while limiting the quality of your output. If an item breaks and takes a long time to replace this could severely hamper your experiments, costing you valuable time and energy.
3. Upgrade from paper
The advantages of digitising your lab are extensive, but a few reasons include:
Having all notes in an indexed format
Saving time finding information already written down
Enhancing sharing, collaboration and innovative ideas
Reducing waste paper and storage space
Plan ahead
Ask for help
Record everything
Therefore, going paperless will save you time and effort. It may also promote staff well-being and improve the scientific output of the lab.
5 great tools to help you go paperless
4. Get advice from your peers
One of the best ways to optimise your labs workflows and experimental protocols is to ask those with more experience.
You may well be doing cutting edge science, but for a lot of procedures you will not be the first in the world to use them. The majority of new experimental protocols are derivations of previous work. It will be necessary to tune the protocols to your particular experiments, but it is also likely that someone will be able to give you some advice on how to do it.
One online portal, with 8 million participating researchers is ResearchGate. On this network you can find relevant papers, ask questions and advice and look up researchers working in similar areas to you.