Are We Still in the Dark Ages of Sharps Safety?

“What’s happening with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) should happen with sharps safety,” Clarke says. “MRSA has moved from reducing to an acceptable level to a more or less zero-tolerance mentality. And that is the attitude we need to take as far as sharp injuries go. Getting it down to 50 percent of what it was before is unacceptable as a stopping point. Think about the individual trauma that goes with one case — so we have to get a mentality which says ‘Hey, our objective should be zero sharps injuries,’ and that is the mentality that’s necessary. That is not the mentality that’s out there right now, except in some facilities that have seen success because they are taking that attitude. I think there is a general acceptance that we’ve got down to a certain level and we can’t go any further — well, we don’t accept that. We think better technology and education and training can continue to drive it down and zero should be the objective. Your chances of getting to 10 percent are much better if your objective is zero than if the objective is 25 percent.”

Clarke suggests the agenda for the future is to find ways to keep the subject of sharps injury prevention current and in front of the healthcare community. “We must eliminate the complacency that is still apparent in some institutions. We must continue to keep the issue alive, as well as bring new and different technologies to the market; we must consider new technology instead of being satisfied with retrofitted devices that have been around for 15 years.”