Premier, Safe Injection Practices Coalition Release Meeting Proceedings

In the past decade, failures to follow safe injection practices (e.g., misuse of syringes, needles and vials) have resulted in dozens of outbreaks across a wide variety of U.S. healthcare settings. These events required notification of greater than 125,000 patients, advising them to seek testing for bloodborne pathogens such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.

Premier and the Safe Injection Practices Coalition are providing the proceedings of a stakeholder meeting held in late April 2011, convened by both entities to raise awareness, continue the national dialogue and expand safer and innovative approaches and product designs to protect patients from unsafe injection practices.

The meeting, Safer Designs For Safer Injections: Innovations In Process, Products And Practices, brought together nearly 200 stakeholders representing government, public health, clinicians, patients, product manufacturers and suppliers, and professional, accreditation, and other healthcare-related organizations.

The focus of the meeting was on unsafe injection practices impacting on patient safety. However, there was widespread recognition that unsafe injection practices and non-safety devices can also present serious risks for healthcare providers. In reality, patient and worker safety are closely linked. Valuable lessons from ongoing efforts with healthcare provider needlestick prevention can be applied to patient safety as well. Visit the Safety Institute website for tools, resources, devices, OSHA compliance tools, and worker educational programs and brochures at www.premierinc.com/needlestick

Among the recommendations in the proceedings are to expand the use of existing technology, strengthen regulatory requirements and oversight, and increase efforts to educate and empower both patients and clinicians about safe injection practices. Discussions of challenges, obstacles and key elements for success are also described. Continued collaboration requires commitment A recurring theme throughout the meeting was the need for continued collaboration among all stakeholders and a strong commitment and investment of resources to build on existing efforts for patient and worker safety. This meeting is just one example of collaboration that continues through the efforts of the Safe Injection Practices Coalition, Premier Safety Institute, and other government and non-governmental healthcare organizations to move steadily towards our goal of safe injections for all. Visit the conference website to download or order a copy of the proceedings, slides, and other resources for safe injection practices: www.premierinc.com/saferinjectionsmeeting