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Needlestick Injury and Post-Exposure Protocol Readiness

Posted on 09 Jun 2011 by admin | Filled under: personal-injury

If you are in the medical or dental profession, you are likely to face a Needlestick Injury sooner, or later. The problem is the injury carries the risk of infection with blood borne pathogens. Most often this means HIV or Hepatitis. This issue is considered so great in the US, that Congress has passed legislation to enforce regulations, for example, the "Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act". In some states, the regulation has been included as part of the labor code.

Surprisingly, the best way to protect healthcare providers from this type of injury is a trivial one: to use "sharp injury protections" at least part of time while handling instruments. Use of protective devices has proven to reduce the numbers of needle injuries significantly.

In addition to regulations in protecting your staff, the Department of Labor requires that incidents should be reported. You can find more information about regulations on the US Department of Labor website, the standard number is: 1910.1030.

If you are located in US or Canada, you likely have to follow very specific safety regulations that call for not only reporting, but for the implementation of a post-exposure protocol in your practice as well. Information required in a needlestick (or other sharps) injury log submitted to the government, is frequently a minimum of:

•A description of the device involved

•Specifications that relate to the physical space or department where the exposure happened

•An explanation of how the incident occurred

If you are using EMR software to manage your practice, it is even easier to stay prepared for post-exposure protocol. This is so, especially if your EMR system supports customizable reports. In that case, you can design your own needlestick injury reports ahead of time. The reports can be made available to staff electronically, and work best when part of the new employee orientation, with routine safety and post-exposure protocol training.

Some EMR providers include a Needlestick Injury Report on their website for download. For example, Fields of Code has two versions of this report depending on the level of confidentiality you wish to use. The reports can be used as templates within the EMR system, directly or extended into custom versions for a consistent appearance with the clinic's current forms, other reports, and pamphlets.

Through training and preparation of required reports digitally in advance, you can ensure that things are ready to run smoothly for post-exposure protocol when a needlestick injury could not have been prevented.