Standard Operating Procedures, When Do You Do your rating? Good Laboratory Practice

Importanceof standard operating procedures introduced you to the need for awareness of SOP’s and self introspection on your contribution to your team by following the

guidelines therein. Such awareness also helps you appreciate the bigger role of your organization, its quality objectives and goals.

Each section has a subset of Standard Operating Procedures that relate to its activities. It is not expected of you to go through each and every SOP of the organization but at least you would are expected to have awareness and understanding of your section or division’s SOP’s as they have relevance to your routine activities.

In the present article I shall briefly cover some critical laboratory activities which have a significant bearing on reliability and accuracy of your analytical data. It is virtually impossible to imagine a laboratory without Standard Operating Procedures covering these important areas

I wish to give you a small exercise. Review the available SOP’s on the topics covered and rate the content coverage in terms of its contribution towards achieving its objective of reliance on reported values.

Critical areas of activity:

• Training – adequate working knowledge of technique, processes and operations
• Weighing – proper weighing practices and balance calibration
• Dilutions – serial dilutions practices, correct use of micropipettes
• Calibration – calibration schedule and practices adopted for instrument as well as volumetric glassware
• Maintenance – upkeep of instrument through specified maintenance schedules at defined intervals.

Hope you agree with me that all the mentioned activities contribute critically to the reliability and accuracy of your results Please do take some time to go through the related SOP’s and rate the coverage on a scale ranging from 1(inadequate) to 10(complete satisfaction) and do not forget to list out your suggestions for improvement.

No doubt you will find it difficult to spare your valuable time for the review but a little effort will result in a win-win situation for yourself and your organization. You will pick up some useful tips which you might have overlooked in the past and your suggestions will be appreciated by your superiors and the Standard Operating Procedures could be revised on the basis of your recommendations.