Laboratory Science SIWES Report: Bench Records and Biosafety

This is a documentation guide, not instructions for conducting tests or handling hazardous samples. Only authorised, trained personnel working under the applicable laboratory procedures should carry out laboratory work.

A laboratory science SIWES report should explain the bench work you actually went through: where you trained, the unit or section you were attached to, the samples and methods you saw, the equipment you handled, the quality checks you witnessed, the hazards you met, and what you learnt. It must trace back to your dated logbook. Students of medical laboratory science, microbiology, biochemistry and related courses often write the same report: a long copy of a school practical manual, a list of tests nobody can place in a week, and a closing chapter that says the training was "very educational". A report that names the unit, the dates, the type of sample, the method and your honest role is already ahead of that pile.

Your institution's SIWES guide and your supervisors set the chapter order, layout and evidence rules. Start from the general SIWES report guide and use this article for the laboratory-specific parts: what to record at the bench, how to describe methods without copying a procedure, how to handle confidentiality, and how to write honestly about biosafety.

Bench records become useful report evidence when the dates, method and your role remain clear. UniDraft helps organise the permitted facts and guidelines you confirm into an editable SIWES document. Start your laboratory SIWES report using the report workflow, then check every technical statement. Do not upload patient data or restricted laboratory records.

The short answer

• Keep a dated bench record from week one: date, unit, sample type (never an identity), method, instrument, what you saw and your role.
• Label every task observed, assisted or performed under supervision, and keep that label identical in the logbook, the report and your defence.
• Never put patient names, hospital numbers or real results in the report. Describe the process, not the person.
• Document the actual safety controls relevant to each activity and your role, without treating a short report summary as an operational procedure.
• Your department's approved template beats any outline you read online, including this one.

What SIWES is, so your introduction is accurate

The Industrial Training Fund (ITF) describes SIWES as a skills training programme that prepares students for the work situation they are likely to meet after graduation. Its stated objectives include giving students industrial skills and experience in their course of study and helping them apply theory in real work. The ITF also describes a logbook in which students record their training activities, vetted and signed by the institution's supervisor and the industry-based supervisor. You can read this on the ITF SIWES page.

Rules for laboratory and health-related courses can differ from other disciplines, including how placements are arranged and whether a separate period of professional training follows graduation. Do not mix those up with your SIWES. Describe the SIWES placement you had and say what your school's handbook requires. If you need the basics first, read what SIWES is, and if you are unsure how your report will be marked, how SIWES is graded explains why you should ask your department rather than trust a figure from a forum.

Laboratory placements are not all the same

A hospital laboratory, a diagnostic centre, a food or water quality laboratory, a pharmaceutical or brewery quality control unit and a university research laboratory run very different days. The report skeleton is the same, but what goes into the activity chapters is not.

Choose the pattern nearest to your placement and write in that language:

• Hospital or diagnostic laboratory. Your evidence is sample intake and labelling, routine tests by unit (haematology, chemistry, microbiology, serology, histology), quality control and confidentiality.
• Research or quality control laboratory. Your evidence is assays, standards, calibration, batch records and documentation.
• Food, water or environmental laboratory. Your evidence is sampling, culture and counts, comparison with a standard, and limits.

If you rotated through several units, give each its own dated block and say how many days you spent there. Do not claim expertise in a unit you passed through for two days.

Record the right things at the bench

Laboratory work is procedural, which makes it easy to record well and easy to fake badly. The fix is the same as in every discipline: write what happened when it happened, and keep your role honest.

A useful entry has these fields:

1. Date and unit. The day and the section you were in.
2. Sample type. Blood, urine, stool, swab, sputum, water, food or a reagent batch. Never an identity.
3. Procedure. The name of the method, the kit or reagent family, and the instrument used.
4. Result handling. What you saw and how it was recorded or reported by the staff. Where numbers are involved, write the unit. Do not copy patient or client results.
5. Quality control. Which control or standard was run and what the acceptance rule was, if you were told.
6. Your role. Observed, assisted or performed under supervision.
7. Safety and waste. The actual authorised controls, relevant waste arrangements and permitted incident information. Do not publish private or restricted details.

The logbook guide covers signatures and weekly sign-off, and its discipline examples show how specific entries differ from vague ones.

A sample logbook entry table

This is an original fictional layout example, not a procedure, real placement record or content to copy. Your own dates, units and methods replace everything in it.

Date	Unit and sample type	What was done	Role
Mon	Reception, assorted samples	Learnt the labelling and registration system, checked that each container matched its request form	Assisted
Tue	Haematology, blood	Watched a full blood count run on the analyser, saw the daily control run before patient samples	Observed
Wed	Microbiology, urine	Recorded the scientist’s explanation of an authorised microscopy workflow without copying patient records	Performed under supervision
Thu	Chemistry, serum	Watched centrifugation and assay setup, saw the calibration check	Observed
Fri	Weekly review	Reviewed the week with the supervisor and had the logbook signed	Performed

The table says which unit, what sample type, what was done and what the student's part was. It says nothing about a patient and nothing about a result.

Confidentiality: what never goes in the report

Health laboratories handle information about people. Even outside a hospital, client data and product results belong to someone. A good report protects both.

• No names, ages, ward details, hospital numbers or contact details. Not in the text, not in figures, not in photographs.
• No actual identifiable or restricted patient or client results. If you want to illustrate a type of result, describe it generically or use a clearly labelled hypothetical, and say it is hypothetical.
• No photographs of samples with visible labels, request forms or screens.
• No internal documents. SOPs, quality manuals and instrument printouts are usually controlled documents. Summarise the idea in your own words.
• Ask first. If you are unsure whether your host allows you to describe something, ask your industry-based supervisor and note that you did.

This is both an ethical point and a practical one. A panel will trust a student who handled information carefully more than one who put a real result in an appendix.

Describing methods without copying a procedure

Methods are the heart of a laboratory report, and the place where copying a practical manual is tempting. The test for your own writing is whether it says what you saw in this laboratory, not what every laboratory does.

Use this pattern for each method you want to describe:

1. Purpose. What question the test answers, in one sentence.
2. Principle in your words. For example, what a stain highlights or what an assay detects. Keep it short and cite a textbook if you rely on one.
3. What you saw done. The steps at the level of a careful summary, in the order the scientist did them, with equipment names.
4. Quality control. The control or standard run, and what it meant if it failed.
5. Your role. Observed, assisted or performed under supervision.
6. Something specific. A challenge, a repeated test, a reagent that had expired and was replaced, a mislabelled container that was rejected.

Three or four methods described this way, with real details, are worth more than twenty methods listed in a sentence each. If you include a calculation, such as a dilution or a concentration, include it only if you did or witnessed it with real values from the day.

Quality control and accuracy

Explain the quality checks you actually observed and their recorded purpose. Write about what you witnessed, without inventing numbers:

• Daily controls and calibration. Which instrument was checked each morning and what was done if a control was out.
• Sample acceptance. How containers were checked for labelling, volume and condition, and what happened to a rejected sample.
• Documentation. Registers, worksheets and result authorisation, described in general terms.
• Repeat testing. Why a result might be repeated and who decided.

If your laboratory worked to a recognised quality standard, say which one your supervisor named and what you actually saw that related to it. Verify any accreditation claim against the relevant official record and its scope; a staff statement alone is not evidence of accreditation.

Biosafety: write what you actually saw

Biological laboratories carry real risks, and examiners expect a student to have noticed them. Describe actual controls and missing information accurately. The examples here do not establish that a process is safe or complete.

For every activity, add the one or two safety steps that really applied: gloves and laboratory coat, eye protection where splashes were possible, hair and footwear rules, hand washing on leaving, sharps disposed of in a puncture-resistant container, no eating or drinking in the work area, safe handling of centrifuges, safe disposal of cultures and contaminated materials, and what was done after a spill. Include these only if true for you.

Two public references are useful for understanding what good practice looks like, though neither is Nigerian regulation. The World Health Organization's Laboratory biosafety manual, fourth edition, published in December 2020, takes an evidence-based, risk-assessment approach to working safely with biological agents and includes monographs on topics such as personal protective equipment and waste management. The UK Health and Safety Executive's biosafety hub gives an overview of biological hazards, the legal framework in Great Britain and controlling exposure in laboratory work. Use them for vocabulary and for comparison, and say clearly when you cite them that they are international guidance, not the rules your placement was bound by.

Then add a short section on what your laboratory actually did: induction, vaccination or health checks if you were told of them, protective equipment issued, waste routes and incident reporting. If something was lacking, say so factually and treat it as a recommendation, which the closing chapter guide explains how to write.

Figures, tables and photographs

Good figures in a laboratory report are modest and honest:

• A table of the units you rotated through, with dates and what you did in each.
• A labelled sketch of a microscope field or a workflow, drawn by you.
• A flow diagram of how a sample moved from reception to reporting.
• A table of an illustrative dilution or calculation you worked through yourself.

Number each one, caption it, refer to it in the text and say what it shows. Do not paste photographs from the internet as your own, and do not include any image that could identify a person or reveal restricted information. If your department wants formulae, unit symbols or subscripts typeset correctly, the guide to formatting chemical formulas in academic reports shows how in Word.

A working chapter outline

Use this only where your approved template leaves the activity chapters open. Your department's layout comes first.

Preliminary pages. Title page, certification, acknowledgement, abstract or summary, table of contents, and lists of tables and figures as required.

Chapter 1: Introduction. Brief and accurate background to SIWES, aims and objectives of your training, and the scope of your report.

Chapter 2: The host laboratory. Name, location, type, services, organisation structure and the units you were attached to, written from what you saw and what your host allows.

Chapter 3: Training activities. Organised by unit and period. Each method or activity follows the purpose, principle, what you saw, quality control, role and safety pattern above.

Chapter 4: Experience gained, challenges and lessons. Skills built, tied to specific weeks, and real challenges (limited reagents, equipment downtime, short staffing) with how they were handled.

Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendations. A short summary, your judgement of the training and recommendations addressed to a named party.

References and appendices. Textbooks and guidance you cited, and any appendix your host allows.

Common mistakes supervisors flag

• A practical manual in disguise. Chapters on "microscopy" or "types of culture media" with no mention of what happened in your laboratory.
• Role inflation. "I performed the HIV test" when the record shows you labelled tubes.
• Real patient or client data. Names, numbers or results in the text or an appendix.
• No quality control content. Methods described as if every run always works.
• Biosafety copied from a poster. Rules listed that you never saw followed.
• Copied SOPs or host descriptions. Controlled documents or a website history pasted in.
• A logbook and report that disagree. A unit in the report that the logbook does not show.
• Backfilled logbook. Entries written in one sitting weeks later, which assessors can often recognise.
• Wrong formatting. Font, spacing and heading levels that differ from your institution's rules. The free formatting checker reads a .docx and flags mismatches, and the format directory lists university rules where they are on record.

Defence questions to prepare for

Panels in laboratory courses tend to probe method and reasoning. Prepare honest answers to questions such as:

1. Walk me through one test from sample receipt to result authorisation.
2. What is the principle behind that method?
3. What controls were run, and what would you do if a control failed?
4. How was the sample checked before it was accepted?
5. What are the main sources of error in that test?
6. What safety precautions applied, and what happens if there is a spill?
7. Which part of the report did you only observe?
8. What would you recommend the laboratory change?

The guide to defending your SIWES report covers how to structure answers and what to bring.

A realistic writing timeline

1. Week one: review the existing record. Lay your logbook out by week and unit, mark gaps honestly, and ask your industry supervisor to confirm a detail if you can.
2. Week two: draft the activity chapter from the record, unit by unit, with role labels and safety steps.
3. Week three: the rest. Host laboratory, experience gained, biosafety section, conclusion and recommendations.
4. Week four: figures, formatting and checking. Number and caption figures, apply the institution's formatting and compare the report with the logbook.

If your supervisor sends corrections, managing IT report supervisor corrections shows how to track them so nothing is missed.

Pre-submission checklist

• Every activity matches a dated logbook entry and carries an observed, assisted or performed label.
• No patient or client identity or real result appears anywhere, including appendices and photographs.
• Methods are written in your own words, not copied from an SOP or manual.
• Safety and waste steps appear inside the activities, with a short section on what the laboratory did.
• Figures and tables are numbered, captioned and discussed in the text.
• Chapter order, headings and length match your approved guide.
• No signature or approval appears that you have not actually received.

Where UniDraft fits in

UniDraft builds the written IT/SIWES report as an editable Word (.docx) document from the placement facts you confirm, your supervisor's instructions, your department's format and your university's format, applied in that order of priority. It does not invent methods, results or approvals, and it does not fill your logbook or Form 8 or produce slides. If your supervisor sends corrections, you provide them, confirm the changes, and a new version is created while earlier versions are kept. You still supply the real bench details, because those are what you will be asked about at your defence.

Start your document →

Sources

• ITF: SIWES management: scheme description, objectives and logbook supervision.
• WHO: Laboratory biosafety manual, fourth edition: international risk-assessment approach to laboratory biosafety (December 2020).
• HSE: biosafety: overview of biological hazards and controlling exposure in laboratory work (United Kingdom; used for vocabulary and comparison only).