Sharps Safety Enhanced by Education, Culture Change

Safety-Engineered Devices

Employing engineered safety devices – both active and passive – along with training on how to use them can reduce the number of sharps-related injuries.

“Employees must be shown the advantages of using safety devices that will reduce sharps injuries,” Daley says. “Infection control staff should be accumulating data that support a reduction in injuries using these devices. Most importantly, these healthcare professionals should be working with manufacturers to make their products more user-friendly and safer.”

Inviro Medical’s senior vice president of sales, Mark Stoppenbach, notes, “To boost sharps safety practices in the acute-care environment, awareness of the available sharps safety products on the market is first and foremost. Education on sharps safety products may be obtained via Web sites, peer-reviewed articles, surveys and advertisements, etc. Involving acute-care clinicians in the facility’s mandatory annual review of sharps safety products will educate them thereby increasing their desire to promote the use of sharps safety in their environment.”

Barsamian says, “Giving clinicians an option to always use sharps safety devices where they could incur a sharps injury is the best way to boost safety practices for clinicians and patients. A terrific way to demonstrate this practice is through the new Safe-T™ PLUS Trays available from Cardinal Health. These new trays contain every device a clinician needs during the selected procedure to be completely compliant with sharps safety regulations and recommendations put forth by the CDC, OSHA and NIOSH.

Ana Stankovic, MD, Phd, MSPH, vice president of medical and scientific affairs and clinical operations for BD Diagnostics - Preanalytical Systems, advises, “Obviously, having devices available that provide healthcare workers with the highest possible level of protection against sharps-related exposure to bloodborne pathogens is important, so the need to improve and refine these safety-engineered devices is an ongoing one. BD is committed to remaining at the forefront of this safety evolution by offering safety-engineered needles designed to prevent exposure to bloodborne pathogens during phlebotomy and injection procedures. One product of note is the BD Vacutainer® Push Button Blood Collection Set, designed to reduce two very important issues associated with blood collection procedures: exposure time and ease-of-use. This blood collection set activates while the needle is still in the vein, resulting in zero exposure time if used properly. The safety-engineered mechanism is activated with the simple push of a button, making healthcare worker compliance more frequent and reliable.”

Stankovic points to a study by the University of Nebraska that shows 74.3 percent of users activated the safety feature on traditional blood collection methods, while 97.6 percent of users activated the safety feature of BD Vacutainer® Push Button Blood Collection Set.1 Moreover, data published in the Journal of Clinical Chemistry states that, over a five-year period, one large institution realized an 83 percent reduction in needlestick injuries, with an impressive 100 percent reduction (zero needlestick injuries) during the final 12 months of the study.2 “These data show that an intuitive device can result in higher activation rates, which in turn helps prevent opportunities for injury and pathogen exposure,” Stankovic says. “Working with device manufacturers to establish the best possible educational tools is critical to helping infection preventionists get the message out to healthcare workers about how to protect themselves. At BD, we offer full in-service training, educational materials, and preanalytical education programs designed to inform healthcare workers about the importance of employing best practices, particularly in phlebotomy, to prevent sharps injury as much as possible.”