making change happen, so everyone has to be on board with the effort.
But that doesn't mean you won't get some initial pushback when
pushing for sharps safety, so energetically publicize and promote the
initiative. We got everyone involved and brainstorming by sponsoring a
safety zone slogan contest. (The winning slogans were "Be Sharp –
Don't Get Stuck" and "Needle Say More?"). We also recruited several
surgeon-champions to help us trial products and to further raise every-
one's awareness. Some surgeons in particular were especially conscien-
tious about passing and sharps safety, so those were the ones we
approached. They agreed to do all they could to promote the idea.
Sharps safety products are presented to the hospital's
Perioperative Quality Assurance Committee and the committee's
findings are shared with the surgical team on a quarterly basis to
obtain the team's support and feedback.
We also made posters that explain the safety zone concept and hung
them near the main OR desks. We also created laminated sheets with
safety zone bullet points, which we put in all our ORs. The sharps safe-
ty committee created a video to showecase our efforts and to help
drive home the message, and we added a segment on sharps safety to
our perioperative boot camp. Now, every new surgeon and staff mem-
ber learns about safe sharps handling and the safety zone concept. Our
goal is to create a mindset in which sharps safety is considered the
norm, not the exception.
Not done yet
Improving sharps safety is an ongoing journey. We're constantly shar-
ing sharps safety statistics with staff and surgeons — we reduced
sharps injuries by a few ticks last year — and we've definitely made
the surgical team much more aware of the issue. In that sense, the ini-
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