Sharps injury is depressingly common but should be preventable. Less easy to prevent is a blood splash that can unexpectedly contaminate the face and eyes – eye in particular are a potent and often unrecognised route for infection.
Several approaches are possible to prevent sharps injury through the use of passive engineered safety sharps, good sharps safety practice including safe disposal, and safe management of BS EN ISO 23907 2012 compliant sharps bins at the point of use and as the pass along the disposal chain.
But not so at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary where some idiot placed a used and part-blood-filled syringe on top of a sharps bin that really should have been in a safe location well away from inquisitive children.
The parents now face a significant worry throughout and beyond a period of precautionary treatment, blood tests etc for the little lad, and hopefully a successful complain to the heath regulators, HSE and anyone else who will take real action to make sure that those responsible are properly reprimanded. If the culprit(s) can be identified I think it appropriate that the conduct committee of their professional body should be invited to investigate, with expulsion if appropriately found.
Huddersfield Royal Infirmary medical director David Wise said: ‘This is unacceptable and should never have happened and for that we apologise to the family.
‘We have reviewed the environment on the unit and are issuing a reminder to all staff that sharps boxes must be kept in a safe location to make sure that this does not happen to anyone else.’
But that’s just not good enough. Placement of sharps into a sharps bin is a perfectly reasonably safety precaution and those who are so lax in syringe disposal should face severe professional reprimand and/or regulatory action. The more fundamental issue of placement of the sharps bin, out of reach of children is too a well-recognised issue and should not be a new concept but part of established and quite routine practice. Failure is a matter for the regulator.