The most prevalent, least reported and largely preventable serious risk health care workers face comes from the continuing use of conventional needles that can transmit bloodborne infections to health care workers employed in a wide variety of occupations. Elimination of unnecessary sharps and the use of safer needles can dramatically reduce needlestick injuries. This video shows a history of the efforts to protect workers from bloodborne pathogens and to prevent needlesticks. The video shows the role of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and other labor unions and their members in the passage of Federal OSHA Boodborne Pathogen Standard in 1991 and the Federal Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act in 2000. Read the moving testimony of Lorraine Thiebaud, RN ( at http://archives.republicans.edlabor.house.gov/archive/hearings/106th/wp/needl... ) on behalf of the SEIU before the June 22, 2000 U.S. House of Representatives Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the Education and the Workforce Committee On "OSHA's Compliance Directive on Bloodborne Pathogens and the Prevention of Needlestick Injuries" Before the passage of this Act, the federal government and others estimate that there were 600,000 to 800,000 needlestick injuries each year. This meant approximately two thousand needlestick injuries every day. It was estimated that of those who are stuck every year, at least 1,000 workers would eventually contract a serious infection from a needlestick injury. In 2001, in response to the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act, OSHA revised the 1991 Bloodborne Pathogens Standard. The revised standard requires employers to select safer needle devices and to involve employees in identifying and choosing these devices. The updated standard also requires employers to maintain a log of injuries from contaminated sharps. Safer needle devices have integrated safety features built into the product that prevent needlestick injuries. The term "safer needle device" is broad and includes many different devices, from those that have a protective shield over the needle to those that do not use needles at all. The use of conventional needles in the health care environment today without integrated safety features has been compared to the use of unguarded machinery decades ago in the industrial workplace. Despite this existing and widely available technology, more than 500,000 health care workers still incur needlesticks from both safer and conventional needles. Once stuck, these health care workers not only run the risk of acquiring a number of serious infectious diseases, but they and their families must deal with the emotional stress of waiting a minimum of 6 months to find out, through antibody testing, whether or not a particular needlestick injury will cause a potentially life-threatening disease. After a needlestick injury, the risk of developing occupationally acquired hepatitis B in the non-immune health care worker ranges from 6 percent to 30 percent. In a remarkable example of the positive public health impact of an OSHA standard, since OSHA released the Bloodborne Pathogens Standard in 1991, hepatitis B infections among health care workers have plummeted from 17,000 to 400 cases annually. For more on this important Act and the follow-up OSHA regulations, go to http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/bloodbornepathogens/index.html . For more information on Safer Medical Device Implementation in Health Care Facilities, go to the NIOSH webpage at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/bbp/safer/ .This 2001 video was produced by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and posted here with permission.
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Sharp Sense: Promoting the safety of health care workersby PSIglobalunion247 views
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