Current Safety Scalpels Don’t Cut It!
November 26, 2017By: Adeline Yi, Anzen™ Product Manager
The importance of sharps safety has long been established – especially in the OR with the potential for scalpels to cause deeper and more serious wounds. Yet nationwide, the conversion to safety scalpels has been painfully slow.
In a survey of more than 200 nurses, 83% of OR nurses have personally witnessed or experienced a scalpel-related injury, yet only 33% reported that safety scalpels were being used in their facility.
As it turns out, surgeons, surgical techs and OR nurses do not like the existing safety scalpels on the market.
For surgeons, the main problems with the current offerings on the market are:
- They didn’t like the general feel of the safety scalpel
- They had specific complaints about its weight, balance, or line of sight
- They had difficulty with safety sheath
- The activation method was cumbersome
Surgical techs and OR nurses, on the other hand, would like to see safety scalpel devices that are safe and easy to assemble and remove.
This was validated when we surveyed the surgeons at the ACS Clinical Congress 2017. Out of the 43 respondents surveyed, 41% said that the safety mechanism on the current safety scalpels in the market were too cumbersome and another 39% said that the safety mechanism of the current offerings obstructs the view of the incision.
The challenge is clear: To speed the adoption of safety scalpels, new models must do a better job of meeting surgeons’ needs.
To find out how our new Anzen™ Safety Scalpel was designed to address the needs of the entire surgical team, or to become our sharps safety champion and lead product evaluations at your facility, please click here to contact us.