Abstract:
“Pressures of the pandemic and a lack of training has led to a 50% rise in needlestick injuries, a Royal College of Nursing (RCN) report suggests today.
Sharps injuries are where a needle, blade (such as a scalpel) or other medical instruments penetrate the skin.
The authors surveyed 7,571 RCN members for the report. Of those 15% said they had suffered a ‘sharps injury’ in 2020. This compares to 10% in 2008.
Reasons for the rise cited in the report included fatigue induced by the pandemic, low staffing levels, lack of training and safer sharps and sharps bins not being available.
The RCN says this fits with the rapidly-changing role of nursing staff who have taken on many of the tasks traditionally done by doctors in recent years. For example, some nursing support workers now administer insulin injections.
The College, which led a campaign for the safer use of needles in healthcare settings, said the onus is on the employer to ensure all nursing staff using needles and other sharp instruments get the training they need.
In 2013, following the campaign, new safer sharps regulations were introduced in Great Britain to try to reduce sharps injuries.
The report, called ‘Blood and Body Fluid Exposures in 2020’ written by a RCN working group and led by New Zealand-based consultant microbiologist Terry Grimmond, makes recommendations including that all organisations annually review their sharps injuries data and prevention policies.
Fatigue tops this list of reasons for injuries with more than a quarter of nursing staff (27%) citing it for a reason. More than 1 in ten (12%) said staffing levels contributed to their injury.
The report found that wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) was considered a contributing factor by 9% of staff.” RCN (2021).