Website spotlight: How healthcare execs can improve sharps safety
Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, December 16, 2011
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!
A "culture of safety" is a central value in most healthcare institutions. One crucial piece is protecting employees from the risk of occupational exposures to bloodborne pathogens. Indeed, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires that engineering and work practice controls be used to "eliminate or minimize employee exposure" to the "lowest feasible extent."
Ten years after passage of the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act (NSPA), it is time to take stock. How is your institution doing to maintain "continuous quality improvement" when it comes to sharps safety?
In data collected by the University of Virginia's International Healthcare Worker Safety Center over the past two decades from a voluntary data-sharing network of hospitals, a significant drop in needlestick injury rates was observed one year after passage of the NSPA in 2000. Since then, rates haven't changed very much.1 Such data underscore the need for ongoing efforts and a sustained focus in order to achieve further reductions in sharps injury and blood exposure rates.
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!
Related Products
-
Medical Environment Update
Timely medical compliance news from OSHA, CDC, EPA, and other regulatory agencies!
-
Bloodborne Pathogens Training Video
Meets OSHA requirements for training employees on the bloodborne pathogens standard!
-
Hazard Communication Standard Training Video
Meets OSHA requirements for training employees on the Hazard Communication Standard!
-
Lab Safety Training Made Simple
Written by "The Safety Lady,T" Terry Jo Gile, this book and CD-ROM will help make obligatory lab safety training simple and...
-
Needlestick Prevention Training Video
Highlighting the five most frequent needlestick scenarios, this training video instructs frontline healthcare staff on on...
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- Featured blog post: Nurses face felony charges after reporting physician to the Texas Medical Board
- Topic: CMS, OESS post new security compliance review information, checklist
- Q/A: Volume requirement for reporting hydration services
- HIPAA Q&A: Answering service messages
- News and briefs: Oklahoma Osteopathic Association against residency bill change
- What does case-mix index mean to you?
- QA:Coding multiple initial infusions
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- State medical board will hear unprofessional charges against OB-GYN
- The debate continues: Nurses who reported physician to the Texas Medical Board file federal appeal
- E-mailed
-
- Featured blog post: Nurses face felony charges after reporting physician to the Texas Medical Board
- Are your workforce members texting PHI?
- Don't let these sentinel events trigger falsely
- Arkansas woman convicted for HIPAA violation
- Q/A: Coding infusions to correct low potassium levels
- Q&A: Coding for protein malnutrition
- Q&A tackles coding questions about injections and infusions
- Joint Commission Center announces handoff communication solutions
- Inside best practice: Reduce patient falls with a stoplight
- Identify modifiable risk factors to prevent patient falls
- Searched