From: Ian blenkharn@ianblenkharn.com
Category: News & information
Date: 01 Sep 2009
Time: 09:06:35 +0200
Remote Name: 86.138.128.253
I was disappointed this morning to read a note in OSHA Healthcare Advisor about the use, or not, of safety needles.
OSHA Healthcare Advisor "is an exciting online community created for OSHA program compliance managers and safety officers in healthcare facilities such as medical and dental practices, clinics, surgery centers, other ambulatory settings, and hospitals". A correspondent asked the expert:
Safety devices and non-contaminated needles
Q: When drawing up medication, must we use a safety needle if it is not to be used to administer to the patient?
A: Non-contaminated needles are not subject to the bloodborne pathogens standard, according to Enforcement Procedures for the Occupational Exposure to Bloodborne Pathogens: “Needles that will not become contaminated by blood during use (such as those used only to draw medication from vials) are not required to have engineering controls under this standard.
The needle used for the actual injection, however, must incorporate engineering controls.”
Sadly, if following the letter of the law, the answer is, I assume, entirely correct. But already, this approach puts non-safety needles into general use in the workplace. And will every non-safety needle be used only as intended, and this be free from any risk of infection transmission? The answer to this is almost certainly 'No'.
For those who may be injured by sharps from any needle in waste, the inevitable lack of knowledge is obviously unhelpful. Do we ignore the wound on the assumption, and only on assumption, that the needle was safe? Or endure a long anxious wait and possibly risky preventative drug therapy on the possibility that perhaps it was not? It's not a call I would like to have to make.
The only certain way to ensure that sharps injuries among waste handlers are reduced is to ensure the universal use of safety needles such that there is never an either or choice since that is the key point at which things can go so devastatingly wrong.