Gina Pugliese, Rn, Ms
Author – Gina Pugliese, RN MS
Vice President of the Safety Institute, Premier healthcare alliance
It was 20 years ago when I first heard about syringes being reused on multiple patients, followed by a flurry of guidelines cautioning about the need to use a single syringe for each patient. Times change – safe injection practices are not optional – patients deserve better. And yet, in the last ten years, unsafe injection practices have resulted in more than 30 outbreaks of infectious disease across the United States, including hepatitis C, and notification of more than 125,000 patients. In a recent survey my organization, the Premier healthcare alliance, found that syringe reuse and other unsafe injection practices are still occurring today among a small but disturbing percentage US clinicians in various healthcare settings.
But why? Health care providers do not come to work with the intent of harming a patient. Yet, lack of awareness and mistaken beliefs about safe injection practices are putting their patients at risk. As highlighted in our article and a recent CDC commentary by Dr. Joseph Perz, it is NOT true that that contamination only affects the needle and not the syringe. Likewise some providers may not realize that it NOT OK to reuse a syringe if they only inject into IV tubing or to reuse a single dose vial for multiple patients if the vial has leftover medication in it.
What can we do? Patients have a right to expect that they won’t get an infection after an injection. The solution requires public and private sector collaboration to solve this problem. For example, the Premier healthcare alliance is collaborating with the Safe Injection Practices Coalition to bring clinicians, manufacturers, professional groups, governmental agencies, and researchers together for an open meeting today, April 26th in Washington DC. Our intent is to raise awareness and continue the national dialogue on expanding oversight, education, and safer and innovative approaches and product designs to protect patients and prevent infections related to injection practices. I encourage you to visit the CDC’s injection safety website, the Premier Safety Institute and the Safe Injection Practices Coalition where you will find some terrific resources and links to many other groups with useful materials.
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August 25, 2012 at 8:17 am ET - shail
The biggest problem is that nobody believes downstream reuse of syringes exist wherein
these used syringes are picked up by rag-pickers and been sold back in the market as new…we should only buy auto disposable syringes which automatically locks itself after single use hence nobody can misuse/reuse it
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November 26, 2011 at 11:06 am ET - HELEN CLARIE OGDEN-GRABLE, MT(ASCP)PBT
I cannot imagine that anyone is still performing this unthinkable act! Obviously, someone is monitoring or we would not have this data. My question is: What is being done to stop this?
hcog
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November 21, 2011 at 2:57 am ET - Reuse
Strictly for patients, there should be no reusing of syringes to avoid contamination. But syringes, those mostly used nowadays are disposables can be reused for some other purposes other than health. Reusing them for ink injection and or in many other applications which would not injure human.
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August 24, 2011 at 12:49 pm ET - Ann Robertson
I would be interested to know if it is lack of awareness or cost (or some combination of both) that led to the unsafe injections.
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April 28, 2011 at 7:48 am ET - Robert Moses
It looks like greater liability is needed: Civil liability without limit and criminal liabilityconsisting of: no injury = attempted agrivated assult; injury without death = agrivated assult; 1 or 2 deaths = murder; 3 or more deaths = capital murder. At least that is how we can do it here in Texas. The liable parties need to be the clinician actually engaging in reckless behavior and any supervisor who directs reuse or fails to forbid reuse. In addition liability insurers need to get on board. It would be reasonable to rate clinicians and facilities where this is a problem and charge them about 10 times as much for E&O premiums for at least a decade. Clinicians who are involved in such cases need to carry their liability issue with them even if they change employers and their new employer needs to be required to pay a similarly enhanced facility liability premium. This will make such recklessness be career ending. This is a problem because it is not being taken seriously. The lives and health of patients is seen as less valuable than a disposable syringe. Those who hold this view need to be seen as having a career that is less valuable than a disposable syringe too.
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April 28, 2011 at 2:43 am ET - sleepaids
I LOVE your site! Very useful information about Health. Thanks for the always interesting and useful posts! Keep blogging.
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April 26, 2011 at 5:13 pm ET - Linda Pifer, Ph.D.
I am absolutely stunned that this is STILL a problem. Apparently we just can’t educate people enough about this critical issue.
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