Employee Training and Awareness
Raising awareness of how to avoid injuries from needlesticks and sharps is an important step in prevention. Through employee education and visual reminders, your organization can help all employees both understand and prevent needlestick and sharp injures.
Checklists
Nine Steps to Avoid Needlesticks
A downloadable pocket card perfect for handling out to employees during new hire orientation or during annual skills fairs. These pocket cards can be kept with the employee, taped in lockers or on clipboards, but they serve as a quick reminder of how to prevent needlestick injury.
Flyer/Sign/Poster
Emergency Sharps Information Place card
A downloadable resource that can be posted in departments to remind staff what to do in the event they experience a needlestick or sharps injury. This would be a great resource to include in new hire and annual education for all staff members.
Patient Education:
Patient education is an important part of ensuring success with the plan of care. Including information on how to handle sharps and needles will help prevent injuries from occurring to patients or others if they are part of the home care plan.
Flyer/Sign/Poster
Do’s and Don’ts: Safe Disposal of Needles and Other Sharps Used at Home, Work, or While Traveling
A poster developed by the FDA that can be downloaded and used for education of patient’s and families regarding proper disposal of sharps.
Sharps and Sharp Injury Management
Awareness and evaluation of the types of sharps within your organization and where these sharps are used can be helpful in implementing injury prevention plans.
Assessment tools
Sharps Device Inventory
Information from the Sustainable Hospitals Program at University of Massachusetts Lowell that provides an approach to developing a sharps device inventory within your organization.
Worksheet to Estimate Cost of Sharp Injuries
A worksheet, developed by the CDC, that can help an employer calculate the average cost of a sharp related injury. This type of worksheet can help build a campaign to obtain leadership commitment of the problem or it can be used as a PI tool.
Sharp Injury & Needlestick Prevention Online Resources
A collection of general resources including information from the industry leaders who are leading the way in needlestick and sharps injuries.
Articles
International Safety Center: Sharps Injury
This resource provides the annual EPINet Sharps Injury and Blood and Body Fluid Data Reports. Current data can be found on Sharps Injuries and Blood and Body Fluid Exposures from 2010 and forward. This information provides detailed statistical information on these injures that may be helpful in your prevention efforts.
Articles
OSHA: Needlestick Prevention
OSHA provides a Hospital eTool on needlestick and sharps injures. The eTool provides general information on bloodborne pathogens and also breaks out information on needlestick and sharps hazards by department. Department information includes virtual realty training on hazards.
Articles
International Sharps Injury Prevention Society
The Society offers a website dedicated to promotion of safety with use of needles and sharps in healthcare. The site offers an inventory of hazards and resources for safety products.
Articles
ASC Quality Collaboration :Needstick
A toolkit from the ASC Quality Collaboration that addresses Safe Injection Practices. The toolkit contains assessments tools, implementation aids, training materials, monitoring tools, workplace reminders and guidelines from leading authorities to help your organization to reduce sharps injuries.