This retrospective descriptive study was conducted to survey the needlestick injuries(NSI) in nurses and doctors.
The subjects of this study were 351 nurses and 198 doctors of four teaching hospitals, Pusan.
The data was gathered from March, 18 to April 9, 1988 and analyzed though SPSSWIN program for frequency, percentile and X1 -test.
According to the results of the study, 85.5% of subjects had experienced NSI (94.4% of the nurses and 73.9% of the doctors). The ratio of the experience of NSI in nurses was significantly higher than that of doctors (X2 = 53.54, P=.00). Most needle-stick injuries occured during the administration of intravenous injection (36.7%) in nurses, on the other hand percutaneous venipuncture for blood sampling(35.3%), suturing(27.2%) in doctors. The mostcommon situation of these NSI was recapping contaminated needles after treatment. Only 12.0% of nurses and 38.6% of doctors reported wearing gloves when the NSI happened. 26.1% of subjects reported that they could not identify the source patient after NSI. The major reason of NSI were preceived to be carelessness (81.4%). Of these NSI, 54.6% occured in busy or emergency situations.
Among the management for NSI, exam(8.6%), medication (9.8%) and counseling (11.7%) and reporting(2.6%) is lower than bleeding(80.3%) from the wound, cleaning (63.3%), disinfection (91.3%) and reviewing the clinical records of the patients (82.3%).
In conclusion, nurses and doctors are at a high-risk of needlestick injuries but substantially they are not good at preventing and managing NSI. So efforts to reduce NSI should be directed not only at improving procedural skills for intravenous catheter insertions, but also in increasing use of barrier protection such as gloves, and so on. Also immunization and educational efforts should be made along with better designs of needles to reduce the risk of NSI. Continuing prevention and training programs for NSI are needed in order to avoid unwanted infection.
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