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In an influenza pandemic, health care workers may find their respirators difficult to tolerate for long hours. Without additional training, they also are likely to forget how to don the respirator properly or even which respirator model they should wear.
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Aging doesn't have to mean a time of decline for the nursing work force. But it will take proactive measures to keep experienced nurses at the bedside and to keep them safe.
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When a local public health department in California opened packages of FluVirin pre-filled syringes to start the flu immunization campaign, the vaccine administrators were stunned. Contrary to federal law and regulation, the syringes had a fixed needle with no safety device.
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The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recently approved a plan that calls for smallpox immunization of 510,000 health care workers. The plan suggests that all hospitals should designate a smallpox care team that should be immunized prior to any release of the virus.
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Employee health professionals will not be administering the smallpox vaccine to health care workers, but they may be among the first to receive it under a recommendation approved by two federal advisory panels. About 500,000 health care workers around 100 per hospital may be vaccinated under the latest plan to prepare for bioterrorism. There have been no cases of smallpox worldwide since 1977, so even a single confirmed case of smallpox would be considered a bioterrorism event.
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After health care workers receive the smallpox vaccine, employee health professionals will assist with the most important vaccination role: monitoring reactions and protecting patients and others from vaccinia.
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Contraindications to Smallpox Vaccination
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More than 50 patients were infected with hepatitis C at an Oklahoma pain management clinic when a nurse reused a syringe and needle for injections into a heparin lock of the patients IV line. The case, which is still under investigation, represents the largest known nosocomial transmission of hepatitis C in the United States, says Michael Crutcher, MD, state epidemiologist with the Oklahoma State Department of Health in Oklahoma City.
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he Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations.
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Employee injury rates are gaining attention as one sign of nurse staffing problems. As concerns rise over a growing nursing shortage, employee health professionals have an unprecedented opportunity to link patient safety with worker safety.
