The aim of this study was to identify how doctors and nurses experienced sharps injuries in operating rooms and the risks for these injuries by analyzing data from 78 Japanese hospitals participating in the nationwide EPINet surveillance system. The years of professional experience of the cases were classified into tertiles separately for doctors and nurses. Suture needles accounted for 54.9% o...

INTRODUCTION Medical students undertake clinical procedures which carry a risk of sharps injuries exposing them to bloodborne infections. OBJECTIVES To study the prevalence and correlates of sharps injuries among 4th-year medical students in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. MATERIALS AND METHODS The survey was conducted among 4th-year medical students to find out t...

To examine work-related blood and body fluid exposure (BBFE) among health-care workers (HCWs), to explore potential risk factors and to provide policy suggestions, a 6-year retrospective study of all reported BBFE among HCWs (1998-2003) was conducted in a 430-bed teaching hospital in Australia. Results showed that BBFE reporting was consistent throughout the study period, with medical staff exp...

Clinical waste disposal carries with it a risk of serious and possibly life-threatening infection. Combining confidential questionnaires and structured interviews with discrete observation, the attitudes and approach to safe handling of bulk clinical wastes by staff in a specialist waste treatment facility were assessed. With particular attention to glove use and hand hygiene, observations were...

Background: The aim of this paper is to determine factors associated with sharps-related injury rates in nurses by analysing the combined data from two state-wide cross-sectional studies of nurses and comparing rates between public and private sectors and between different nurse practice areas in NSW. Methods: The data from two studies conducted in 2006 and 2007 were combined for 44 similar dat...

Results: A total of 435 HCWs completed the questionnaire. 1. A total of 46.7% of respondents had suffered from either needlestick/sharps injury (74.47%) or contamination of skin/mucous membranes (25.53%). 2. A total of 76.9% of all needlestick/sharps injuries were inflicted by injection needles. 3. Taking blood was the most dangerous procedure/activity: it was responsible for 29.56% of all inju...

Sharps containers are associated with 11-13% of total sharps injuries (SI) yet have received little attention as a means of SI reduction. A newly developed reusable sharps containment system (Sharpsmart) was trialed in eight hospitals in three countries. The system was associated with an 86.8% reduction of container-related SI (CRSI) (P=0.012), a 25.7% reduction in non-CRSI (P=0.003), and a 32....

Needlestick and other sharps injuries are a key Canadian public health issue, affecting 70,000 people per year and costing some dollar 140 million. A safety program at Toronto East General Hospital--focusing on blood collection and patient injection--achieved an 80% reduction in injuries within one year (from 41 in 2003 to eight in 2004), with blood collection injuries eliminated entirely.