Needle Stick injuries
Clinic health and safety
Needle Stick injuries
Needle stick injuries are a hazard of working with any sharp object in the clinical environment.
Ensuring that you are following the safe needling procedure will help reduce, but not eliminate the risk, of sustaining a needle stick injury.
If unfortunately you sustain a needle stick injury, you should follow the procedures laid down by your professional association or body, and the guidance set out by the British Acupuncture Council (BAcC), the Acupuncture Association of Chartered Physiotherapists (AACP), the British Medical Acupuncture Society, or other professional body
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If the mouth or eyes are involved, they should be washed thoroughly with water.
If skin is punctured, free bleeding should be gently encouraged
The wound should be washed with soap or chlorhexidine and water,
The wound should not scrubbed or sucked.
All exposure incidents should be reported promptly and in confidence to your organisation’s safety officer. This is important for 3 reasons:
- To ensure appropriate management to reduce the risk of blood-borne virus (BBV) transmission
- To document the incident and the circumstances of it in case of later issues involving insurance or litigation, both civil and criminal
- To allow accurate surveillance so that collective data analysis can inform measures to reduce the risk of further exposures.
A blood sample from the exposed practitioner should be sent by their GP to a virology or microbiology laboratory for serum to be saved and stored.
There is no point in testing this sample for blood-borne viruses at this stage, unless the exposed practitioner has reason to believe they may already be infected.
The purpose of this sample is to be able to show that, in the unlikely event of subsequent seroconversion, the practitioner was not infected at the time of the exposure, and therefore the infection was acquired from the incident.
The practitioner should seek professional help to talk about their concerns following the incident and discuss the available information about risks from the exposure.
Counselling of the practitioner should include information regarding:
- Statistics regarding seroconversion risks
- Risks involved in this particular incident
- Steps to reduce the risk of BBV transmission
- Follow-up procedure and rationale behind it
- Infection control precautions i.e. safe sex during follow-up period, but no additional work restrictions
- Establishing support networks: friends, family etc
- Allowing time to express anxieties and concerns and to answer questions
- HIV and HCV follow-up tests (and HBV if not immune)
Follow-up to confirm that occupational blood-borne virus transmission has not occurred.