BACKGROUND The decrease in reported sharps injuries (SI) in the United States has markedly slowed. Additional devices and strategies need investigation. Sharps containers are associated with SI, and more than 90% of these injuries are related to container design. This study addresses the hypothesis that containers with enhanced engineering can reduce SI. METHODS In a before/after intervention...

The increasing use of electronics in residential applications has been paralleled by a realization that surge protection may be necessary for this type of equipment. Installing a surge-protective device on the power-line port as well as on the communications-line port of an equipment might appear sufficient to ensure this protection. However, the normal operation of one of the protective device...

Needle stick injuries (NSIs) are frequently reported as occupational injuries among health care workers. The health effects of a NSI can be significant when blood-to-blood contact occurs from patient to health care worker. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the number of NSIs decreased among health care workers at risk in one Dutch academic hospital after introduction of inject...

COMPARISON OF ATTENUATION CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ACOUSTIC REFLEX AND THE V-5IR EARPLUG OBJECT To compare the attenuation characteristics of the acoustic reflex and the V-5IR earplug, RESULTS Pre-and post-exposure thresholds were obtained for 13 subjects exposed under two conditions to 100 rounds of machine gun fire (fired one round at a time). In condition I the acoustic reflex (AR) was activat...

BACKGROUND Despite best efforts by healthcare providers to sterilise their hands through hand washing prior to touching medical equipment and patients, bacteria are still present and can be spread through physical contact. We aimed to reduce the spread of touch-induced and airborne bacteria and virus spreading by using a touch-free glove-dispensing system that minimally exposes gloves in the bo...

The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of using the auditory brain stem response (ABR) as a method of measuring the attenuation characteristics of nonlinear hearing protective devices. Sound field ABRs were recorded from seven normal hearing subjects with and without hearing protection. Three hearing protectors (two nonlinear and one linear) were evaluated. Test stimuli, con...

BACKGROUND Adopting technologies such as injection safety devices in healthcare settings can enhance injection safety. Developing guidelines for appropriate adoption of such technologies need to consider factors beyond evidence for their health effects. The objective of this study is to systematically review the published literature for evidence among healthcare workers and patients about knowl...

This study is based on hospital statistics using 1985 burn patients admitted to Maputo Central Hospital, Maputo, Mozambique, for a period of 42 months (1988-91). On the basis of the results obtained, some suggestions are made for the design of the targets and methods for a preventive strategy for burn injuries in Maputo. Strengthening of preventive measures should occur during the cold season o...

We report a comparative laboratory study between 2 peripheral intravenous catheters equipped with a passive fully automatic safety mechanism to assess generation of blood droplets during withdrawal. One presented no fluid droplets, whereas the other presented droplets in 48% and 60% for the best and worst case, with analysis of variance showing positive effects on the number of droplets generat...

Fit testing of tight-fitting respiratory protective facepieces has been in use for some years, but there are still widespread misconceptions and misunderstandings about what a fit test pass actually signifies. Various aspects frequently generate research papers, and there are three relevant ones in this issue (Han and Lee, 2005; Kuo et al., 2005; Vaughan and RajanSithamparanadarajah, 2005). In ...