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"Health care personnel refers to all paid and unpaid persons working in health-care settings who have the potential for exposure to patients and/or to infectious materials, including body substances, contaminated medical supplies and equipment, contaminated environmental surfaces, or contaminated air.
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"I was injured at work almost seven years ago. I am still going through financial difficulties. I can never return to nursing. I am left with a lot of nerve damage to my legs and continuous back pain. I receive about $400 biweekly from worker's comp. This is nowhere near my pre-injury pay. Learning to live with pain and limited mobility and chronic money problems has been the worst of it all. Nurse's post on an online forum of Work Injured Nurses' Group (WINGUSA)."
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Amid the successes in sharps safety in hospitals in the 21st century, there is one glaring gap: The operating room. Sharps injuries there remain as much of a problem as they were in 2000, when the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act was signed into law.
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As the nation's population ages, a growing number of registered nurses, certified nursing assistants and nurses' aides will be working in patients' homes rather than in hospitals. But many of them will be working without the basic safety devices that most nurses now take for granted, safety experts say.
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Editor's note: In this issue, we continue our special report on needle safety issues. Safety needles are now commonplace at hospitals around the country, but sharps injuries persist both from conventional and safety devices. The problem may lie in selection of the device, inadequate training or, as in the OR, in resistance to sharps safety advances.
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To keep young, vulnerable patients safe from a potentially life-threatening disease, the University of North Carolina Health Care in Chapel Hill requires employees to have a vaccine that protects against a respiratory illness.
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A proposed federal action plan is targeting influenza vaccination of health care workers, and occupational health physicians will be represented on the working group that is considering new recommendations including possible mandates.
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An estimated 41.6% of all people who died in the United States last year were under the care of a hospice program, according to the latest "Facts and Figures: Hospice Care in America" report produced by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) in Alexandria, VA. This statistic represents an increase over previous years: 38.8% in 2008 and 35% in 2007.
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Cancer patients who stop hospice care are far more likely to use expensive medical services, such as emergency care and hospitalization. Use of these services leads to healthcare costs that are nearly five times higher for patients who disenroll from hospice care compared to patients who remain in hospice, according to a study published in Journal of Clinical Oncology.
