-
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced an initiative to emphasize hazard communication, an area that already is a routine part of inspections. Every inspection even those focused on a specific complaint includes a review of hazard communication and record keeping.
-
Studies have associated workplace exposures to hazardous drugs with health effects such as skin rashes and adverse reproductive events (including infertility, spontaneous abortions, or congenital malformations) and possibly leukemia and other cancers.
-
Nurses who prepare and administer chemotherapy agents in outpatient settings often dont use the proper gloves or other recommended personal protective equipment (PPE), according to a survey of oncology nurses. Furthermore, few nurses who handle chemotherapeutic drugs received health evaluations that included reproductive and cancer evaluation, the survey found.
-
Current work practices are not adequate to protect health care workers from chemotherapeutic agents and other dangerous drugs, and hospitals need to be more vigilant in their efforts to prevent exposure, according to a hazard alert from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
-
-
Many nurses still do not have access to sharps safety devices, and conventional devices are available in most health care facilities, according to a survey conducted by Nursing2004.1
-
Immunize your health care workers against influenza every year, infection control officials are urging.
-
There is a right way to put on and remove personal protective equipment (PPE). Now theres a step-by-step guide to teach health care workers how to do it.
-
Hand hygiene may get a boost from more widespread use of alcohol-based hand rubs, as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) voted to permit dispensers in corridors of hospitals.
-
Fit-testing is still on, but the timing may be off. Hospitals may take as long as a year to implement their annual fit-testing of filtering facepiece respirators used for protection against tuberculosis.
