Don't be fooled: It can happen to your staff
Don’t be fooled: It can happen to your staff
Needlesticks a top threat to health care workers
In 1992, Lynda Arnold, RN, was a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit at the Community Hospital of Lancaster, PA. Less than a year later, she tested HIV-positive following a needlestick and is now an activist promoting needlestick safety.
Arnold is just one example of how, regardless of how careful your staff are, a needlestick is a distinct possibility among health care professionals, and the repercussions can be serious, regardless of how rare. In fact, needlestick injuries were the number one job-related threat to health care workers in the United States at the time of Arnold’s accident. 1
Such an alarming statistic apparently has yet to sink in, she says.
"There is still that mentality on an individual health care worker level that It won’t happen to me,’" Arnold says. That’s a mentality to which Jim Herbert, RN, CCRN, CRNI, IV therapy education coordinator for First American Infusion Education in Brunswick, GA, can attest.
As a hospital IV nurse, Herbert suffered a needlestick in a situation he admits resulted from cutting corners. "I didn’t take the time to put the patient back in bed, and the sharps container was on the wall on the opposite side of the room near the bed," he recalls. "I worked in ICU for 10 years and never got stuck, but it happens to everybody if you’re not careful."
Herbert was more fortunate than Arnold in that there were no lasting effects from his needlestick, other than the fact that he "became fanatical about needlestick prevention."
But it would be foolish to note that all or even most needlesticks are the fault of the health care worker. Arnold says there is nothing she would have done differently in her case.
Arnold was starting an IV on an AIDS patient, when the patient inexplicably flinched and knocked Arnold’s arm, forcing the needle into her left palm.
"I’ll never know why he moved," says Arnold. "He was not an aggressive patient; if anything he was very lethargic. It was a startled movement, not a deliberate movement."
The patient died two weeks after the incident, so Arnold was never able to ask him what had caused him to flinch.
Ironically, Arnold’s first thought following the needlestick was to save the IV site. She didn’t panic until after she took off her surgical gloves and saw that she was bleeding.
Arnold began to worry even more when, an hour after she was sent to the emergency department for evaluation, she found out the patient was an AIDS patient.
"I didn’t know [he was HIV positive] because I was new, and I truly believe it doesn’t make any difference [if you know]," says Arnold. "I did everything I could that day I wore my gloves, I took my time, and I warned him. The only thing that could have prevented that injury was the use of a different device, a device that didn’t allow the needle to remain exposed."
Arnold’s tests for HIV were negative until her six-month follow-up test. Ironically, her hospital had switched to needleless devices two weeks prior to her positive test.
Reference
1. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Regulation, Business Opportunity and Energy of the House of Representatives Committee on Small Business, Healthcare Worker Safety: Needlestick Injuries, 1992, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session (Feb. 7, 1992).
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