Resources
for sharps safety and occupational
exposure prevention
Below are resources on sharps safety and occupational exposure
prevention, including links to tools for conducting exposure
surveillance, a list of safety-engineered sharp devices, statistics and
benchmarking figures on percutaneous injuries, research articles, and a
wealth of other information.
Be sure to look as well at the extensive links to relevant U.S.
government resources (OSHA, NIOSH, CDC, etc.), found
here.
- Emergency needlestick information
- Advances in Exposure Prevention:
- Bibliography of
articles on needlesticks, sharps safety, and occupational exposure to
bloodborne pathogens (over 2,500 articles from medical and
nursing literature around the world, covering a century of research in
the field)
- BOOK:
Preventing Occupational Exposures to Bloodborne Pathogens: Articles
from Advances in Exposure Prevention,
1994-2003
- Checklist for Sharps Injury
Prevention (pdf)
- Cost of needlesticks:
- U.S. Government Accounting Office report:
"Occupational Safety: Selected Cost and Benefit Implications of Needlestick Prevention Devices for Hospitals" (PDF)- Cost of Needlesticks and Blood Exposures (AEP article in pdf)
- Worksheet: Measuring the Cost of Sharps Injury Prevention (CDC)
- Denominators for Calculating
Percutaneous Injury Rates (AEP article in
PDF)
- EPINet
Resources
Links to EPINet-related information, including data reports and EPINet ordering information. -
Estimate of the Annual Number of Percutaneous Injuries Among
Hospital-Based Healthcare Workers in the U.S., 1997-1998
(PDF; 2004 article from Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology;
combines data from EPINet and NaSH surveillance networks to derive
estimates)
- Estimates of Annual Number of New
HIV/HBV/HCV Infections
- Evaluation of safety
devices -- tools and forms from TDICT
- Healthcare Worker Blood
Exposure Risks: Correcting Some Outdated Statistics (AEP
article in PDF)
-
Joint Commission: Sentinel Event Alert - Preventing
Needlesticks and Sharps Injuries (2001)
-
Nursing2004 needle-stick and sharps-safety survey
(Perry J, Robinson ES, Jagger J)
- OSHA and legislative
links
- OSHA Citations for Failure
to Use Safety Devices (AEP article; PDF)
- OSHA standard
interpretation letters since 2000, organized by title and
by year (selected)
- Safety Device
List
List of safety-engineered devices designed to prevent needlesticks/blood and body fluid exposures to healthcare workers; updated regularly. - Suture needle injuries (information sheet; PDF)