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A phlebotomist developed active TB and 56 employees tested positive for latent TB infection after a highly infectious patient spent three weeks on general medical wards before being placed in a negative pressure room.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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Same-day surgery managers were apprehensive about periodic performance reviews (PPRs) by the Joint Commission. However, the response has been so positive to the self-evaluation required at the midpoint of an accreditation cycle that the Joint Commission will make the PPR an annual requirement beginning in 2006.
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A new 34-page booklet, Risk Management Pearls for Nurses: Focus on the OR Setting, is available from the American Society of Healthcare Risk Management of the American Hospital Association (AHA).
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Walter LC, deGarmo P, Covinsky KE. Association of older age and female sex with inadequate reach of screening flexible sigmoidoscopy. Am J Med 2004; 116:174-178.
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined that some reprocessed single-use devices (SUDs) no longer can be distributed commercially.
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While laparoscopic cholecystectomies have become common at many same-day surgery programs, laparoscopic exploration of the common bile duct may be less common due to available equipment and potential damage of flexible scopes.
