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Is Sharps Safety Really That Important?

By: Adeline Yi, Anzen™ Product Manager

We are all familiar with OSHA as well as the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act which help keep workplaces such as yours a safer place. But is sharps safety really all that important? Or is it just more bureaucracy and paperwork for all of us?

To answer that question, let us take a look at some numbers in this second part of our five-part series on sharps safety. Reports estimate that as many as 17 percent of sharps injuries are caused by scalpels. In fact, a study found that for every 100,000 scalpels used, there were 662 incidences of injury while there were only 3.2 syringe and needle injuries.

Aside from the sharps statistics, it is more important to understand the consequences of these injuries. Sharps injuries can have a major and unnecessary impact on healthcare facility costs. Immediate and follow up treatment for exposed employees was reported to cost from $71 to $5,000 per case.

Sharps injuries can also have an impact on the injured party. The injured worker faces uncertainty surrounding their infection status during the initial stages of the injury and then may have to face life-changing consequences if they’ve developed a disease. This understandably causes severe emotional and psychological trauma.

So to answer the question: is sharps safety really that important? We believe the answer should be yes, and we hope you agree with us too.

For more information about our Anzen™ Safety Scalpel, click here to contact us or request samples.