person to infect
another. That's why
everyone should treat
every sharps injury as
something that could
have severe conse-
quences.
At our hospital, we
receive sharps-injury
reports every month,
so it was a little sur-
prising and concern-
ing when we saw increasing rates of sharps injuries. Between 2014 and
2016, the numbers had risen from 121 to 135 to 140. And of course, we
knew those were just the reported sticks. We strongly encourage staff
to report injuries, but studies suggest that sharps incidents often go
unreported, either because people are afraid or embarrassed, or
because they decide it's just not worth the trouble. Either way, we
knew it was time to reverse the trend. Here's how we did it.
1. Hands-free passing
As we dug deeper into why members of our surgical team were get-
ting injured more often than they should, all signs pointed to hand-to-
hand passing as the biggest culprit. That became our first target of
process improvement. We mandated the use of safety zones — or neu-
tral zones — as a means to encourage and facilitate hands-free pass-
ing. The concept is straightforward and proven effective: If you're
passing a sharp object to someone else, you need to put it down
before the other person picks it up. The safety zone requires a little
extra time to set up, but it's a matter of safety for everyone.
1 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8
• HEADS UP Staff and surgeons should announce that they're placing sharps in
safe passing zones.
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN,
CNOR
