Risk Factors and Incidence of Sharps Injuries to Nurses Nurses are the largest group of U.S. healthcare workers who experience percutaneous injuries with used sharps. Despite the increasing use of safety-engineered sharps, spurred in large part by federal legislative activity during the 1990s, uptake of safer equipment and best practices remains inconsistent (especially outside hospitals) and injury incidence rates remain high. Early evidence suggests that organizational factors such as staffing levels and workplace climate play a role in needlesticks that is similar to their connection to safety problems impacting patients. Sharps injuries outside hospital settings are much less well-documented and their correlates are poorly understood. This study will use survey data collected in 2005-2006 from nearly 65,000 nurses working in 600 hospitals, as well as home health care agencies and nursing homes in three states (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and California) to investigate sharps injury incidence and risk factors.
Aims i nclude evaluating incidence of injuries in hospitals across major specialties, as well as individual and organizational correlates of injury, including hospital-level workloads and work environment characteristics. A comparison of incidence rates and risk factors between hospital nurses and nurses in home health and nursing homes will also be carried out. Further study of sharps injuries in the era following landmark federal sharps safety legislation passed in 2000 is needed. Results from this study, which would be the largest of its type ever conducted, would have great importance for researchers and practitioners in occupational health, as well as leaders and policy makers concerned with health care safety. The public health impact relates to better strategies for control of exposure to bloodborne pathogens in healthcare workers as well as improving workplace safety more generally. ? ? ?
