Are We Still in the Dark Ages of Sharps Safety?

For the third consecutive year, Inviro Medical Devices is a co-sponsor with the American Nurses Association of the 2008 Study of Nurses’ Views on Workplace Safety and Needlestick Injuries, which provides an eye-opening peek into the opinions, concerns and experiences about workplace safety and NSIs. The independent research of more than 700 U.S. nurses reveals that NSIs and bloodborne infections remain major concerns for 64 percent of nurses. The survey also revealed that 59 percent believe their most recent NSI could have been prevented by improved safety syringe design, with 94 percent identifying specific design improvements.

To access data from the 2008 Study of Nurses’ Views on Workplace Safety and Needlestick Injuries, CLICK HERE. 

“The survey was a confirmation that there is still much to be done,” Clarke says. “We certainly are not yet where we need to be in terms of preventing injuries.”

“We have certainly reduced the number of sharps injuries due to newer safety devices, but we are still in the dark ages with respect to the OR and scalpels, as most have not adopted safety scalpels yet in this arena,” observes Craig Fernandes of DeRoyal Industries.

The Danger Zones: Data from Epi-Net

National data from more recent years indicates that sharps injuries should remain at the top of the HCW safety agenda. The Exposure Prevention Information Network (Epi-Net)’s most current numbers for needlestick and sharp-object injuries (2004; 1,155 total cases and an average daily census of 4,328) indicate the following for selected categories:³

Job category

Nurses sustained 462 injuries/40.3 percent of total injuries

Physicians sustained 131 injuries/11.4 percent of total injuries

Surgery attendants sustained 90 injuries/7.9 percent of total injuries

Location of the injury

Operating room: 355 injuries/31 percent

Patient room, general ward: 330/28.8 percent

Intensive/critical care unit: 97/8.5 percent

When the injury occurred

During use: 469/40.8 percent

After use, before disposal: 169/14.7 percent

Between steps of a multi-step procedure: 140/12.2 percent

Purpose of the sharps

Injection: 265/23.1 percent

Suturing: 246/21.4 percent

Drawing venous blood sample: 149/13 percent

Type of device

Disposable syringe: 392/35 percent

Suture needle: 239/21.3 percent

Reusable scalpel: 43/3.8 percent

Contamination of the sharps

Yes: 726/63.6 percent

No: 388/34 percent

Unknown: 6/0.5 percent

“When the legislation was passed and then the move to safety syringes happened in hospitals, I think there was a significant early reduction in injuries,” Clarke says. “There is an interesting absence of any decent statistics on this, but many people said that injuries were reduced by half, and then we plateaued. If the number was 800,000 to 1 million injuries out there when the legislation was enacted, that still means there are at least 400,000 to 500,000 injuries still occurring. The latest Epi-Net data published in 2004 reported 27 injuries per 100 occupied beds, the annual injury rate for all hospitals. Again, multiply that by 5,000 or so hospitals in the U.S. and you get some big numbers.”