Question

Susan Schultz, a medical assistant, prepares a medication for Mrs. Young that is to be given by an intramuscular injection technique. She has both safety needles and nonsafety needles at hand for use in this procedure. She has not been told to use only the safety needles and feels more comfortable with the nonsafety style because that is what she was taught in school, so she chooses to use the nonsafety needle. After giving the injection, Susan proceeds to dispose of the needle and syringe in the sharp’s container. As she places the nonsafety needle on the flip-lid, it begins to slide off.

Susan catches it, receiving a needlestick in the process. She continues to put the needle and syringe into the sharps container and finishes attending to the patient. After dismissing the patient, Susan reports the needlestick to her supervisor, Linda. Linda immediately asks Susan why she chose not to use a safety needle. Susan explains that she did not think she needed to and was not really trained to use them. Linda also asks if the patient is still in the office and how much time has elapsed since the needlestick occurred.

Susan tells Linda the patient is no longer in the office and that the needlestick incident occurred approximately 10 minutes ago. Linda immediately asks Cindy, the phlebotomist, to draw several tubes of blood from Susan. Once Cindy is finished drawing Susan’s lab specimens, Linda asks Susan to complete an incident report, describing the situation in full. Linda proceeds to call the patient and arrange for Mrs. Yeung to come into the office for lab draws.

1. What do you think about this situation?

2.How can safety be maintained in a medical facility?

3. .Who is ultimately responsible?

Answer 1

Answer 1

Susan should have learned about the safety needles and its usage. If she was using non safety needle, she would have disposed the uncapped syrenge in to a sharps container

Answer 2

The safety in medical facility is maintained by:

• Avoiding errors
• Encouraging for safety protocols
• Upgrading with advanced practices
• Building a rapid response system
• Developing the safety compliance plan
• Evaluating procedures of all workers
• Training of employees

Answer 3

Hospital management is responsible for not training the employee for using safety needles

Susan is also responsible for needle stick as she would have to be more careful and cautious while disposing the syrenge and have followed the protocol by disposing the syrenge without recapping