Healthcare Hygiene magazine August 2020 | Page 19

PPE use, especially respirators and face shields is higher now than ever. Perhaps this is the reason why it always should have been.” Mitchell View EPINet points clinicians to EPINet Report Report for Blood and Body Fluid Exposures. Mitchell continues, “From what we know, SARS-CoV-2 is not transmitted by blood and therefore not a bloodborne pathogen, but that does not mean that precautions put in place to prevent sharps injuries, needlesticks, and splashes and splatters won’t also improve safety of healthcare personnel from this or any other novel virus.” Mitchell says that hospitals can curb and eliminate injuries and exposures through implementing evidence-based best practices to boost occupational health. “Best practices for reducing occupational exposures to sharps injuries, needlesticks, and mucocutaneous exposures include putting practices into place based on what we know works and also based on what exposure incident and injury data looks like in a person’s facility. Relying on surveillance data, whether that is EPINet or a facility’s sharps injury log and OSHA 300, to learn from and prevent future exposures may be the best tool in our prevention arsenal.” She continues, “For example, if suture injuries during skin closure in the operating room are high incident exposure types, facilities need to evaluate and adopt different technologies for that procedure including zipper closures, adhesives, staples, etc. when appropriate. If injuries from disposable syringes like insulin needles are high, consider improving SIP device use, safe safety feature activation, and safe disposal or moving to new innovations in pen needles with SIP features included. If there is a high percentage of downstream injuries, for example nationally we know that nearly one-quarter of all sharps injuries occur to the non-user of the device, then focus should be on SIP activation and safe disposal in patient and procedure rooms and no-hands/neutral zone passing of surgical instruments in an operating room. If injuries from scalpel blades are high, then evaluating and implementing use of safer designs should be the focus area. This could include scalpels with retracting blades or blade covers to prevent cuts or sticks when the device is not in use.” As Mitchell emphasizes, “Really, best practices should be driven by what you know about the injuries and exposures happening in your facility. Your occupational incident data is your best measure of that. Keep in mind though, reporting of sharps injuries, needlesticks, and mucocutaneous exposures is still lower than desired, so injuries and exposures are likely occurring even if your data doesn’t show it. That’s why it is also important to do rounds, interview employees, and participate in infection prevention and occupational health committees and to be in tune with risk management, environmental health and safety, biosafety, the clinical laboratory, ph: +1-888-699-9304 | [email protected] | ContecProfessional.com sterile processing, surgical leadership, and materials management, as well as any others that share the responsibility of worker health and safety with you.” When Clean Counts MOST ™ COUNT ON Contec® Professional * References: American Society of Safety Professionals. Webinar: High Frequency, High Severity and High Relevance: Needlesticks, Sharps Injuries and Bloodborne Pathogen Exposure Prevention. July 10, 2020. International Safety Center. EPINet data accessible at: https://internationalsafetycenter.org/ exposure-reports/ Our products are durable, maximize the efficacy of cleaning chemicals, and help eliminate crosscontamination. We help you ensure critical environments are truly clean. Contec is proud to offer several products on the EPA’s List N. * Sporicidin ® is listed on the EPA’s List N for use against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. www.healthcarehygienemagazine.com • august 2020 19