Article on Needlesticks

[becool5]

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Hello everyone,
I read this article recently. It is interesting and scary! What are current residents thoughts on this? Is the number really that high? There is no data on outcomes of testing for HIV, etc. Does anyone have any data on that?



http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/26/2693?ijkey=Ta.vC9ZBAA9bg&keytype=ref&siteid=nejm

 

[DrDawg]

Yes is was an interesting article. I've been stuck more than once, but only went to occ health when I got myself with a seldinger needle.

 

[tussy]

I've been stuck a number of times - mostly a suture needle with a low risk patient and in those cases i didn't report it. I got a bad stick with a high risk patient once. Rather than go to occupational health, i took the "backdoor route". Got the patients permission for testing and with the help of one of the ID attendings had the blood tested within hours and got the patients negative result back before a long weekend (the injury was on a friday afternoon). I know a few residents that have been stuck by an HIV +ve patient and had to go on prophylaxis - very scary.

 

[Cirrus83]

Yeah it'll happen sooner or later. And not even just for surgery either (although surgeons obviously do have the highest exposure rate), you'll probably end up goofing up sooner or later (or someone else will goof up for you).

But what I'm kinda surprised by is how many high risk sticks go unreported. Yeah you can run the tests with the patients' permission, but even then the tests can be false negative/false positive, so reporting it is probably better in the long run (although either way it'd suck if it was a false negative).

People who do Endoscopies all day still manage to get needle sticks once in a while, lol.