Don’t get hit for unsafe injection procedures
There’s been a lot in the news over the last few weeks regarding safe injection measures, particularly in settings outside of the hospital.
A new study conducted by the CDC and published in the January 6 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine found that over the last decade more than 60,000 patients in the United States have been asked to get tested for hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C (HCV). These infections occurred in non-hospital settings and were a direct result of poor infection control practices.
The CDC reported a total of 33 HBV and HCV outbreaks in 15 states over the last 10 years, including 12 in outpatient clinics, six in hemodialysis centers, and 15 in long-term care facilities, which resulted in 450 infections.
Small ambulatory care facilities are getting dinged for this issue largely because most practices aren’t implementing or following the proper infection control guidelines. These smaller facilities usually have less resources (and with a struggling economy, probably even less than usual). Without an infection preventionist on hand, their infection control plans suffer.
But training staff to follow injection practices is crucial to preventing patient-to-patient transmission of bloodborne pathogens. In order to comply, facilities should avoid these unsafe methods:
- Using a bag of saline or IV fluid for more than one patient or accessing the bag with a syringe that has already been used to flush a patients IV or catheter
- Accessing a shared medical vial with a syringe that has already been used to administer medication
- Using the same syringe to administer medication to more than one patient, even if the needle was changed
Unfortunately, quite a few facilities use multidose medication vials, and multiuse saline bags. Many others are using syringes more than once. That’s running a high risk, particularly if there isn’t enough staff training for infection prevention oversight.
Fortunately the CDC offers quite a few resources for injection safety. We’ve already added a CDC FAQ on Safety Injection Practices and a CDC Checklist for Infection Control and Safe Injection Practices to Prevent Patient-to-Patient Transmission of Bloodborne Pathogens to the Tools section to help you with compliance. Maybe now is the time to double check your facility’s procedures so your patients aren’t leaving sicker than when they came in.
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Peggy Luebbert
Peggy Prinz Luebbert, MS,MT(ASCP), CIC, CHSP, is the owner and consultant for Healthcare Interventions, Inc., Omaha, NE. Luebbert, a medical technologist with a master's degree in pathology, has worked in infection control for more than 20 years, and has published and lectured extensively on a national level. She is certified in infection control and healthcare safety.
Most recently, Luebbert authored the Third Edition of the Infection Control Compliance Guide.
Peggy has written 30 posts.
Comments
Can a 1000ml bag of saline be used to fill up 10 sterile injector syringes (100ml ea) to be used at one syringe per patient?
Why is it that people come up with all these dandy new things for us to do but when you get right down to the nitty gritty you cant find the true answers. Committee, management, higher ups, CDC, OSHA, this group of intellects and that group of intellects walk the plantet earth creating all these new individual ideas in their office and we the people that it truly affects cant get a damn answer from anybody with common sense. Phones keep ringing and paychecks keep getting paid. Help or NO help.
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