What does your sharps-safety training program look like? Are safety sharps widely available to your staff? For many of you, the answers might not be what they ought to be. According to the results of a survey1, many healthcare facilities aren't doing a very good job of training workers on how to use safety sharps correctly and consistently, and many employees don't even have access to them.

The survey showed that sharps-safety implementation, three-and-a-half years after OSHA mandated it, is a mixed picture. Of the nearly 500 nurses who responded, 13 percent said they don't use or seldom use safety devices in their facilities. Many with access to safety devices said they'd had little or no training on how to use them.

Survey findings
Healthcare employers have made some strides in evaluating and implementing safety-engineered devices. But as you'll see from this breakdown of the survey findings, there's much more work to be done.

• Sixty percent of respondents (n=498) said they use safety-engineered sharp devices for all or most patient-related procedures; 27 percent use them for some but not all procedures; and 13 percent used them for few or no procedures.
• Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) said conventional sharps devices are still readily available at their institutions.
• About one-fourth (24 percent) said they'd had inadequate or no training on the safety devices used in their facilities.
• Of those who said they used safety devices for some, few or no procedures, 41 percent reported one or more sharps injury in the previous year. Of those who said they used safety devices most or all of the time, 21 percent reported such an injury.
• More than three-fourths (78 percent) preferred to use safety-engineered devices.
• A full 85 percent regarded safety devices as having made their institution a somewhat or much safer place to work.
• More than half (55 percent) said that a facility's safety record and policy on safety devices would be significant factors if they were considering a new job.

The conversion continues, albeit slowly
In certain device categories, such as suture needles, most healthcare workers are still not using safety alternatives, such as blunt suture needles. In fact, says the survey, safety devices were used infrequently or not at all in more than 10 percent of healthcare facilities. Clearly, the safety conversion process is far from complete.

But the survey results also show that healthcare workers care about their safety and that most want to use protective devices whenever possible. Given the nursing shortage, employers should consider safety devices an investment in both safety and nurse retention. For surgical settings, that means making implementation of blunt suture needles a top priority, because they are the No. 1 cause of sharps injuries in this clinical area.

Reference
1. Perry J, Robinson ES, Jagger J. Needle-stick and sharps-safety survey: getting to the point about preventable injuries. Nursing2004 (April)34(4):43-47.