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Would you take a pledge to raise awareness about sharps injuries and use safer devices? A new coalition called Safe in Common is traversing the country, seeking signed pledges as a way to jumpstart a renewed commitment to sharps injury prevention.
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Gaps in your respiratory protection program can create unnecessary hazards for your employees. A survey of hospitals in California and the Midwest has revealed those weaknesses. For example, health care workers often receive minimal training and are confused about which respirator to use for aerosol-generating procedures.
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Sharps injuries rank eighth in the top 10 device hazards of 2012, according to ECRI Institute, a research organization and evidence-based practice center based in Plymouth Meeting, PA. That places sharps injuries on par with surgical fires (No. 7) and anesthesia hazards due to incomplete pre-use inspection (No. 9).
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As the lines blur between patient safety and worker safety, employee health professionals can expect much more scrutiny from regulators who traditionally focused on patient care.
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Failing to keep your exposure control plan up to date could lead to a citation from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
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The basic premise of worker safety is to provide layers of protection. If each layer is sufficiently flawed, the protection is compromised. That is the lesson of a recent Health Hazard Evaluation in an Arizona hospital, where 18 employees had a TB skin test conversion in 2011 and one employee developed active tuberculosis.
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The pilot testing version of the CMS survey includes the following elements on hospital employee health:
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The initial notice of audit from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights (OCR) asks for a significant amount of documentation and information to be submitted within 10 days of the notice date, but that will not be the end of information for which you'll be asked, says Mac McMillan, chief executive officer of CynergisTek, an information technology security consulting company, who advised a Texas hospital included in the initial audits.
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A study by Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs investigators provides the first in-depth look at how healthcare providers react to medication alerts generated by electronic medical record systems. They found that clinicians often ignore alarms because they are uncertain what they mean.
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The risk of a medication error rises sharply when a hospital's pharmacy is closed, according to a report by Michael J. Gaunt, PharmD, senior patient safety analyst with the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority in Harrisburg. His recent study found that the incorrect drug was retrieved from an automated dispensing cabinet or night cabinet in 82.3% of wrong-drug events.
