A bend in the road to needle safety
November 1, 2012 2 minutes read
A bend in the road to needle safety
Curved not straight means fewer injuries
Sharps injuries from suture needles aren't necessarily happening in the operating room. As Sinai Health System in Chicago discovered, they may occur during the insertion of central lines or other procedures outside the OR. And they can be prevented.
Sinai Health System dramatically reduced non-OR suture sticks by improving training and replacing straight needles with curved ones.
"It's a multipronged approach. You really have to look at where the sticks are happening and what is actually happening at the time the needlestick occurred," says Jan Lepinski, MSN, RN, CIC, director of infection prevention and control at Sinai, who was scheduled to speak at the annual conference of the Association of Occupational Health Professionals in Healthcare (AOHP).
Sinai looked at each needlestick as a root cause analysis an opportunity to figure out what happened, why it happened, and how it could be prevented. Overall, 28.9% of the system's sharps injuries involved suture needles.
"When we started digging deep into why we had all these needlesticks, we found a third of them were [from] straight needles," says Leslie Zun, MD, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine and medical director of employee health and chair of emergency medicine at Chicago Medical School.
As it turned out, the straight needles were primarily used in procedure kits. "We thought, 'That's an easy fix, we'll just remove them from all procedure kits and put in curved sutures and needle holders,'" says Zun.
But the kit packers said kits with curved needles would have to be custom-made and would cost twice as much.
Sinai found a cheaper solution. Materials management attached a suture set and a curved needle to the outside of every kit. "We haven't had any straight line sticks since the implementation," says Lepinski. "The last one we had was in June 2011."
Sinai took other steps to improve sharps safety. When possible, Sinai is replacing sutures with tissue adhesive or staples. The health system encouraged reporting and asked managers to discuss needlesticks with employees to see if they need re-training.
The Sharps Injury Prevention Committee keeps an eye on trends with needlesticks. And Sinai has placed an emphasis on education.
"We found part of the problem was an educational issue," says Zun. "Anyone doing suturing needs to understand how to do it without touching the needle. Needlesticks from suturing primarily occur when someone picks up the needle to position it."
Zun and his colleagues created a video to teach the proper technique. It also discusses the greater risks associated with straight needles and why they should use the curved needles instead. It includes information on needleless methods of closure and what to do if there is a needlestick.
Sinai now has a grant from Ethicon to make a more professional version of the video, which eventually will available online, Zun says.
Sharps injuries from suture needles aren't necessarily happening in the operating room. As Sinai Health System in Chicago discovered, they may occur during the insertion of central lines or other procedures outside the OR. And they can be prevented.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content