Sharps injuries are typically the result of using hazardous equipment in a fast-paced and stressful environment. Lourdes Medical Center is among the top five teaching hospitals with the lowest sharps injury rates.
Peg Johnson, Employee Health Clinician, discusses best practices for sharps injuries and how their team remains focused on safety, training and a goal of zero injuries as the way that Lourdes Medical Center achieved this distinction.
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Low Sharps Rate
Featured Speaker:
Margaret "Peg" Johnson
Peg Johnson, RN is an Employee Health Clinician with Lourdes Health System. Transcription:
Low Sharps Rate
Melanie Cole (Host): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC estimates that about 385,000 sharps-related injuries occur each year among healthcare workers in hospitals. Here to tell us what that means and what they even are is my guest Peg Johnson. She’s a Registered Nurse and Employee Health Clinician at Lourdes Health System. Peg let’s start with sharps injuries. What are they?
Margaret “Peg” Johnson (Guest): Well sharps injuries occur when healthcare workers are doing their job. You give injections. We start IVs. We draw blood. We are working in the operating room with any kind of contact with body fluids or blood products. When we are using a sharp like a needle or a suture and we stick ourselves or have an occurrence where we are splashed, this is a body substance exposure, and this is part of our job that occurs on a daily basis.
Host: So, that part occurs on a daily basis. It’s what you do a large part of it. How common are these types of injuries?
Peg: Unfortunately, they are more common than we would like. So, our goal is always to get better at what we do. We are initiating safety devices that would be – would help us to do this – to reach this goal, self-retracting needles, needle caps that require only one hand, keeping your other hand out of there, less chance of sticking yourself in the less dominant hand. It occurs much more than people know.
Host: Tell us a little bit about the financial burden and economic impact of sharps injuries. What happens when one occurs? What’s the procedure?
Peg: In our facility, what would happen is our associate would immediately report this his manager and proceed to our emergency room, which of course there would be a charge for the emergency room, there’s a charge for the blood testing that we do baseline on our associates and then we are going to also test the source patient. So, that’s also a charge that occurs through our insurance. And I would like to just add that if this occurs, there is no financial charge to the patient.
Host: So, it’s certainly an economic drain every time one of these injuries occurs. Are certain providers more at risk? And what devices are most commonly associated with the sharps-injuries? You mentioned sutures and that you have to take blood. How else does it occur?
Peg: Well our most common device, what I see the most injuries are injections. Now that’s probably because nurses are the largest group in the hospital and they are the ones doing the injections. But most of our injuries are coming from needles, injections. And to add to the economic factor that we were speaking of a minute ago; should an associate decide to go on medication to prevent against HIV spread; that’s a whole additional cost because that now is included in the worker’s comp charge. The medications that they would go on for a month. And then the follow up lab stuff that we do afterwards. All adds to the cost of one needle stick or one body substance exposure.
Host: Wow. So, are there safer sharps devices available?
Peg: Yes. There are. And we are lucky enough to have constantly evaluating our devices and changing them as we can. We now have safety devices on all our needles, most of our IV needles, sutures unfortunately there is not a safety device for but we have a practice in our operating room that’s called the safe basin, so any time a suture is not being used, it’s put into this basin rather than laid on the field or put somewhere where someone could accidentally stick themselves. It goes right into the safe basin and then so it’s able to be used again. It remains sterile there.
Host: Now Lourdes recently got a distinction for reducing the number of sharps injuries that occur each year at your health system. Tell us about that and how did that happen?
Peg: Well I was asked to fill out a survey and I put my numbers in according to the size of our hospital, how many employees we have and to my surprise and enjoyment, elatement; we are good. Our numbers are good. We – it has to be that from our hard work and trying to encourage and teach and constantly reinforce the fact that people have to use the devices; not only use the devices but use them correctly. So, there’s education involved. You need to know how to use the safety device in order to make it to your benefit.
Host: Well education is the key isn’t it Peg. And as you guys are a teaching hospital; you are teaching new residents and interns these safety measures as well, when you are going about that. So, tell us in addition to the education and training; give us some of the best practices that you are looking at the four points of Lourdes best practices to help reduce these types of injuries.
Peg: Well all new associates are informed about our devices when they are hired. Then when they are on their orientation process, it’s constantly being reinforced there. If associate has a needle stick or a body substance exposure, they go through counseling with me and we go over the device and how to use the device correctly. I have them tell me exactly what they do before I tell them the correct way. Sometimes people are using things incorrectly and they don’t realize they are using them incorrectly. And be it habit becomes your habit. So, then it’s a matter of reinforcing and having them change their practice.
Host: So important. So, wrap it up for us. What would you like other healthcare providers and listeners to even know about the fact that these types of injuries are an economic burden on the patient, the hospital and the healthcare provider, that they take a toll, they can cause stress and anxiety, that there are safer devices and reassure them of what you are doing at Lourdes Health System to make that so.
Peg: Well we have incorporated the best practice that we possibly can as far as getting the newest devices in that are safety devices. We are constantly teaching our associates how to handle those devices, what to do if there is a needle stick and to keep our patients safe. That’s the best I can say. And we are striving for zero. We are striving for no needle sticks. We got to shoot high.
Host: You absolutely do and thank you so much for coming on and explaining all of this to us because as patients we don’t often think of the risks that healthcare providers are putting themselves at to help us and so this is really an incredible thing that you are doing, the initiative and the education and thank you again for joining us on this podcast today. This is Lourdes Health Talk. For more information please visit www.lourdesnet.org, that’s www.lourdesnet.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.
Low Sharps Rate
Melanie Cole (Host): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC estimates that about 385,000 sharps-related injuries occur each year among healthcare workers in hospitals. Here to tell us what that means and what they even are is my guest Peg Johnson. She’s a Registered Nurse and Employee Health Clinician at Lourdes Health System. Peg let’s start with sharps injuries. What are they?
Margaret “Peg” Johnson (Guest): Well sharps injuries occur when healthcare workers are doing their job. You give injections. We start IVs. We draw blood. We are working in the operating room with any kind of contact with body fluids or blood products. When we are using a sharp like a needle or a suture and we stick ourselves or have an occurrence where we are splashed, this is a body substance exposure, and this is part of our job that occurs on a daily basis.
Host: So, that part occurs on a daily basis. It’s what you do a large part of it. How common are these types of injuries?
Peg: Unfortunately, they are more common than we would like. So, our goal is always to get better at what we do. We are initiating safety devices that would be – would help us to do this – to reach this goal, self-retracting needles, needle caps that require only one hand, keeping your other hand out of there, less chance of sticking yourself in the less dominant hand. It occurs much more than people know.
Host: Tell us a little bit about the financial burden and economic impact of sharps injuries. What happens when one occurs? What’s the procedure?
Peg: In our facility, what would happen is our associate would immediately report this his manager and proceed to our emergency room, which of course there would be a charge for the emergency room, there’s a charge for the blood testing that we do baseline on our associates and then we are going to also test the source patient. So, that’s also a charge that occurs through our insurance. And I would like to just add that if this occurs, there is no financial charge to the patient.
Host: So, it’s certainly an economic drain every time one of these injuries occurs. Are certain providers more at risk? And what devices are most commonly associated with the sharps-injuries? You mentioned sutures and that you have to take blood. How else does it occur?
Peg: Well our most common device, what I see the most injuries are injections. Now that’s probably because nurses are the largest group in the hospital and they are the ones doing the injections. But most of our injuries are coming from needles, injections. And to add to the economic factor that we were speaking of a minute ago; should an associate decide to go on medication to prevent against HIV spread; that’s a whole additional cost because that now is included in the worker’s comp charge. The medications that they would go on for a month. And then the follow up lab stuff that we do afterwards. All adds to the cost of one needle stick or one body substance exposure.
Host: Wow. So, are there safer sharps devices available?
Peg: Yes. There are. And we are lucky enough to have constantly evaluating our devices and changing them as we can. We now have safety devices on all our needles, most of our IV needles, sutures unfortunately there is not a safety device for but we have a practice in our operating room that’s called the safe basin, so any time a suture is not being used, it’s put into this basin rather than laid on the field or put somewhere where someone could accidentally stick themselves. It goes right into the safe basin and then so it’s able to be used again. It remains sterile there.
Host: Now Lourdes recently got a distinction for reducing the number of sharps injuries that occur each year at your health system. Tell us about that and how did that happen?
Peg: Well I was asked to fill out a survey and I put my numbers in according to the size of our hospital, how many employees we have and to my surprise and enjoyment, elatement; we are good. Our numbers are good. We – it has to be that from our hard work and trying to encourage and teach and constantly reinforce the fact that people have to use the devices; not only use the devices but use them correctly. So, there’s education involved. You need to know how to use the safety device in order to make it to your benefit.
Host: Well education is the key isn’t it Peg. And as you guys are a teaching hospital; you are teaching new residents and interns these safety measures as well, when you are going about that. So, tell us in addition to the education and training; give us some of the best practices that you are looking at the four points of Lourdes best practices to help reduce these types of injuries.
Peg: Well all new associates are informed about our devices when they are hired. Then when they are on their orientation process, it’s constantly being reinforced there. If associate has a needle stick or a body substance exposure, they go through counseling with me and we go over the device and how to use the device correctly. I have them tell me exactly what they do before I tell them the correct way. Sometimes people are using things incorrectly and they don’t realize they are using them incorrectly. And be it habit becomes your habit. So, then it’s a matter of reinforcing and having them change their practice.
Host: So important. So, wrap it up for us. What would you like other healthcare providers and listeners to even know about the fact that these types of injuries are an economic burden on the patient, the hospital and the healthcare provider, that they take a toll, they can cause stress and anxiety, that there are safer devices and reassure them of what you are doing at Lourdes Health System to make that so.
Peg: Well we have incorporated the best practice that we possibly can as far as getting the newest devices in that are safety devices. We are constantly teaching our associates how to handle those devices, what to do if there is a needle stick and to keep our patients safe. That’s the best I can say. And we are striving for zero. We are striving for no needle sticks. We got to shoot high.
Host: You absolutely do and thank you so much for coming on and explaining all of this to us because as patients we don’t often think of the risks that healthcare providers are putting themselves at to help us and so this is really an incredible thing that you are doing, the initiative and the education and thank you again for joining us on this podcast today. This is Lourdes Health Talk. For more information please visit www.lourdesnet.org, that’s www.lourdesnet.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.