Sport and Exercise Science Laboratories

BASES has recently shared and promoted, https://bit.ly/2Wu2nQ9, the recent statement from The Physiological Society, https://www.physoc.org/covid19/returning-to-the-lab/, as the Lab Accreditation Review group deem these to be wholly appropriate.

On 11 May 2020, the Government produced guidance for people who work in or run indoor labs and research facilities and similar environments.

One difficulty we face is the very dynamic nature of what we should and should not do. When you couple this with the local policies, procedures and interpretations of government advice and guidance, any issued statement could be of little use the following week.

BASES will continue to signpost and of course will insist current governmental and local guidance are followed.

We are also asking our Committees and Groups to consider guidance that considers how SES-related courses might return to deliver content safely in the labs and associated teaching facilities with due regard for maintaining the student experience. There are also a wide set of considerations related to employability that we suspect our graduates may be worrying about. There is a COVID-19 Special Interest Group being convened, and this may be an appropriate forum to discuss how best to advise members and all institutions with some guiding principles for moving to the next phase. Many institutions will be contingency planning, but with varying degrees of progress. Clearly, each institution will have specific considerations, not least on checking what their institutional adverse incident insurance providers will cover at this time. Nevertheless, we think members and the sector would be reassured in knowing BASES are looking at the situation on their behalf.

We will took to share any guiding principles, once the group have convened and debated the issued

Finally, we are looking to prepare a general article for a future edition of The Sport and Exercise Scientist on Lab Accreditation. Currently, it’s a very mixed bag (about 20-25 labs accredited at any one time, but there are over 100 HEIs doing SES courses). The TSES article will take insight from accredited Labs to highlight what accreditation means for them and why they sought the accreditation. We will approach a view point from a couple of HEIs, an international lab and a performance environment. This insight will be interesting to some readers and would help promote lab accreditation. After all, if a Lab is doing what it should be doing in terms of quality assurance, then it should sail through accreditation. However, not enough institutions are currently applying.