UHL offers interactive, online courses

Electronic learning allows you to complete courses online anytime at your own pace. The University Hygienic Laboratory offers several electronic courses for public health professionals through Prepare Iowa’s Management System (www.prepareiowa.com). Our current course selection includes the following.

• “Introduction to the public health laboratory system”


The first of our free online courses, this training was originally designed for staff in Iowa’s sentinel laboratories. Sentinel labs are those clinical laboratories across the country where human specimens are analyzed for the presence of microbial agents. These labs are on the front lines of public health because they are often the first to detect pathogens and diseases that may pose a threat to the community.

This course offers an overview of the public health laboratory system, including:

• Specimen submission
• Disease surveillance
• Bioterrorism and Chemical Terrorism response

This course is available at www.prepareiowa.com, or go to the direct link.

• “Lab biosafety: avoiding Laboratory Acquired Infections (LAI)”


If you are a laboratorian who handles biological or microbiological samples, this course is for you. This course is designed to help laboratorians understand the dangers they may face from lab-acquired infections and how they can take steps to protect themselves and their fellow workers.

Information on documented laboratory exposures as well as the potential for future exposures is provided in this course that includes eight interactive exercises. Among other activities, users can drag and drop appropriate items into a biosafety cabinet, view safety equipment and practice at all four biosafety levels.

Test your knowledge as you decide which practices, facilities and equipment to include at each level.
Topics include:

• Video: the proper use of a biosafety cabinet
• Pathogens commonly responsible for LAI and their routes of transmission
• Biosafety levels 1-4 and when each is used
• Dangerous pathogens and “trigger points” for handling them
• Management’s responsibility in providing a safe laboratory environment

This course is available at www.prepareiowa.com.

• “Electronic BT workshop for sentinel labs”


When you log onto the electronic BT workshop, you will enter a virtual laboratory that offers a safe environment in which to practice your BT skills. Here you can select one of 10 agents and view the lab findings, from specimen to Gram stain to colony morphology, before narrowing the “suspects” to just three possibilities. Next, you must decide which rule-out tests are appropriate for your group of three and, after seeing the results of the rule-out tests, determine if you have ruled out the potential agent of bioterrorism or if it must be referred to the state public health laboratory.

Included in the course are five videos in which Dr. Michael Pentella provides more information about five potential agents of bioterrorism:

• Bacillus anthracis (Anthrax)
• Brucella
• Yersinia pestis (Plague)
• Francisella tularensis
• Burkholderia pseudomallei

This course is available at www.prepareiowa.com.