Essay : How can we prevent nurses from needle stick injuries in my job

Preventing Nurses from Needle Stick Injuries in My Job

Introduction

Needle sticking is a frequent occurrence among the healthcare workers. This exposes them to high risk of bloodborne pathogen infection among other deadly diseases including hepatitis and HIV infection. However, with the current technology, nurses should not fear or face such high risks. Organizations such as American Nurse Association have dedicated their efforts to work with nurses across the country to ensure a significant reduction of needle stick and nurse injuries. Thus, nurses should not risk their lives in the line of duty while using sharp or needle devices. This paper places special emphasis on how nurses can reduce incidences or risks of needle sticking while carrying out their jobs.   

Background and Significance

Needlestick and injury by definition refer to the penetration of an instrument that has potential contamination by body fluid from another person’s body (Kakizaki et al., 2011). Needle injection is one of the skin procedures that is done using a syringe and a needle to inject a substance into the human body for the purpose of treatment, prevention or recreation (Galougahi, 2010).  It is estimated that across the world, there are more than 12 billion injections that are administered to patients every year (Suliman et al., 2018). According to Holla et al., (2014), from a recent empirical research in developing countries it has been established that more than half of administered injection are perilous and result in serious health risks. These findings have supported the statistics from the United States Center for Disease Control (USCDC) which reports more than seven hundred thousand needle stick injuries happen among the healthcare workers in the United States (Holla et al., 2014).     Needle sticks injuries that occur due to accidents causes a significant hazard to the healthcare workers as well as the patients.  It has been established that midwifery, nursing, and medical dental workers are at greater peril of infection due to pathogens associated with blood-borne which is associated with needlestick injuries. The world health organization’s reports that cases of Hepatitis C  associated with needlestick are more than 2000, hepatitis B amounts to 8000 cases, and five thousand cases associated with HIV that occurred by the year 2015 worldwide due to needle injuries (Mittal, Tanjea,…