Improve needle safety levels for your medical team by implementing changes to your OR policies, especially involving sharps. With these practices, you can protect your healthcare workers better, ensuring a better workflow and a safer environment.
Track Injuries and Educate Staff
In a recent incident, an OR worker accidentally pricked themselves with a clean needle while trying to recap it. Industry practices say to avoid recapping needles by hand, given the risk involved. They reported the incident, the hospital keeps a record of it, and continues to train staff on behaviors to avoid inside the OR.
Invest in High-Quality Supplies
Look for suppliers providing high-grade medical supplies, such as barrier kit products and solutions. These products protect your healthcare teams from sharps injuries.
Create a Neutral Zone for Passing
It’s best to assign an area where to put or retrieve sharps. That keeps sharps in one place, dramatically lowering the risk of needle stick injuries.
Wear Double Gloves
Encourage double-gloving in your team, as this OR work practice reduces the risk of exposure to blood by as much as 87 percent once the outer glove is punctured.
Use Suture Needles with Blunt Tips
Switching to blunt-tip suture needles can reduce sharps injuries in the OR. They can prevent more than 70 percent of accidental injuries and exposure to a patient’s blood. In addition, surgeons don’t need to change their work practices when using blunt-tip suture needles. The designs even allow doctors to quickly suture and close down site wounds.
Assess and Evaluate OR Instruments
OR personnel continue to have high frequencies of sharps injuries. Working in a surgical setting exposes them to higher risks of injuries. That’s why the continued search, assessment, and evaluation of OR instruments that can reduce sharps injuries in the OR should be part of any hospital policy. If you want to take better care of your medical team, keep looking for tools and supplies that keep them safe. To know more, please visit Sharp Fluidics today.
