Needle stick and sharp injuries among residents practicing surgical intervention.

Abstract

Abstract Background & objective: Needle stick and sharp injury is a common occupational hazard among surgical residents and this is a concerning issue for it can affect once wellbeing. The study aims in assessing the pattern and the circumstance under which needle stick & sharp injuries occur and the trend of reporting of injuries among surgical residents. Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted using self-administered structured questionnaire which is distributed to representative sample of surgical residents training in SPHMMC who are recruited by using a stratified random sampling technique. Data was analyzed by calculating descriptive statistics, tabulation of responses and using Kruskal-wallis test. Result: 68.9% of residents have sustained at least one NSSI over the past one academic year. High rate of injury was found in orthopedics (100%), maxillofacial (100%), and General Surgery residents (77.5%). The differences among surgical specialty is statistically significant (p=0.000) and also the mean ranks of NSSI per a resident are significantly different among the different surgical specialty ( =27.150, 6 d.f., p=0.000). The OR setup, the use of solid needle and suturing are the common circumstance under which most injuries occurred. Residents attribute their injury mostly to “the feeling of being rushed” and “not using appropriate equipment”. Only 14.3% of the recent injuries were reported. Besides “the source patient is not of high risk” the frequently cited reasons for not reporting are “I don’t know if the unit of reporting existed” and “the process takes too much time.” Conclusion & Recommendation: This study established that NSSI is common among surgical residents, yet the reporting is inadequate. Therefore, the reporting system should be upgraded in a way it is encouraging for the users and tremendous amount of work focusing on needle stick and sharp injury prevention method is needed