I have experienced a needlestick injury on around 8 or so separate occasions over my career. The last one was several years ago now (touch wood *tap tap*) making it easy to get a little blasé about the whole experience. Anyway, we tend to give a lot less IM injections than we used to, we use very good cannulas that have retractable trocars, our doctors are a lot more sharps-aware than they used to be. So. I’m a mature, battle hardened nurse now. I have street-smarts. Its unlikely to happen to me again right? Well, did you know more than 18,000 Australian nurses are pricked by syringes and sharps each year? Back up. Read that again. Eighteen thousand nurses a year. It is estimated that only about half of needle-stick and sharp injuries are reported. This means there could be as many as 30,000 incidents each year THIS: Observe standard precautions: * Wash your hands. Before and after any intervention. * Gloves, and eye protection, without exception. * Use safety needles and cannulas. If your hospital is not using some form of safety cannula, you should definitely throw a very big tantrum. * Needles should go directly from patient into sharps bin in one careful motion. Never leave a sharp laying around to take care of *in just a second*. * Never, ever ever try to re-sheath or re-cap a needle. * 100% attention when handling sharps. * 200% attention when handling butterfly needles. They are springy little buggers and will flick around and bite you given half a chance. If you do experience a needle stick injury, immediately wash the site well with water. Squeezing or milking the site is of little benefit. You should then activate your own hospitals policy for post occupational exposure management. Do not be a martyr! Remember, the risk of transmission is determined by the type of exposure rather than the patients risk factors. You and your patient will probably both need blood taken for serological testing for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), and HIV as soon as possible. Depending on your immunization status you may need to have a course of HBV vaccine and a dose of hep B immunoglobulin. If a significant exposure to HIV has occurred, retroviral drug prophylaxis should be offered promptly. Informed use of such post exposure prophylaxis must be started ASAP and expert guidance should be sought. Read up on your own hospitals policy. Finally: If it stung you, report it! Better reporting of needle stick injuries is vital part of improving standards and practices.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 07:29:43 +0000
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