Creating a safety culture is essential for improving patient care and healthcare staff satisfaction. It allows facilities to function smoothly and keeps everyone in them – both staff and patients – out of harm’s way. Everyone in a healthcare facility has a role to play when it comes to maintaining a safety culture. Here we …
Translating Safety into Practice: Sharps Safety Example
In the last blog, we talked about investing in healthcare worker safety has proven long-term benefits, and how organisations can start investing in their worker’s safety. In this blog, we take a deeper look at translating safety into practice, using sharps safety as an example. Healthcare is a complex system, and implementing sharps safety measures …
How To Invest in Healthcare Worker (HCW) Safety
Tight healthcare budgets have forced facilities and organizations to focus on cost-avoidance when relating safety in the workplace. It is often difficult to calculate the definitive value of investing in worker safety. However, there are proven benefits in investing in a long-term staff safety program,1 including: Reduction in workplace incident risk and exposure to liability …
Podiatrists and Scalpel Cuts – Understanding the Risks and How to Prevent Them
Podiatrists use scalpels every day during patient care. They are one of the most frequent users of scalpel blades in any profession. Because of this, removing scalpel blades without the right tool increases their risks of a sharps cut(1). Scalpel cuts can cause: Severed digital nerve and/or tendon Psychological distress and/or trauma Delayed procedures and …
How Sharps and Needlestick Injuries Affect Medical Students
Sharps and needlestick injuries are a serious occupational health risk for those in the healthcare industry. This is especially true for medical students who still lack the clinical experience and expertise needed to properly handle and care for sharps. In addition to medical students, students studying biology and other sciences that use scalpels are at …
Holiday hazards and their impact on hospitals
The holidays are here and while most of us are enjoying time with our loved ones and kicking back, hospital staff are about to get busier. It has been well noted in research that the most wonderful time of the year can also be the most dangerous, with some alarming safety statistics worldwide. We’ve outlined …