Hospital Employee Health – October 1, 2007
October 1, 2007
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Eye of the needle: Surgeons reluctant to trade suture sharps for 'blunt' safety
Sharps safety finally may permeate the nation's operating rooms, the last bastion of resistance in American hospitals. -
Convenience, persistence up HCW vaccination rates
In October, influenza vaccination campaigns will start up once again as hospitals try to improve on a generally dismal performance in immunizing health care workers. Facilities have used various strategies to make the flu vaccine more accessible and convenient and to educate health care workers about its importance. -
Outbreak leads to 40% absenteeism rate
Imagine a communitywide outbreak so pervasive that employees fell ill at work, 40% called in sick, and even the chief nursing executive pitched in to work as a staff nurse. This sounds like a scenario from a pandemic influenza drill — but it actually was a real-life episode of norovirus at Missouri Baptist Hospital - Sullivan, a rural hospital about 70 miles from St. Louis. -
NIOSH to study safety of ortho-phthalaldehyde
Experts in chemical hazards are cautioning health and safety officials to maintain a high level of protective measures with ortho-phthalaldehyde (OPA). The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has launched a two-year, multihospital study to investigate the potential hazards associated with OPA. -
How to make the most of rural resources
What do you do if . . . you're the only employee health professional for a work force of several thousand employees? Or there is no occupational health physician for you to work with? Or you're trained in infection control but expected to know about occupational medicine? -
PA law calls for testing HCWs for resistant staph
In a controversial provision in sweeping health care reform legislation, Pennsylvania is requiring the testing of health care workers who are exposed to patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).