Needlestick Injuries Common Among Surgery Students

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Needlestick incidents among surgeons could be reduced by having physician assistants and nurse practitioners do more of the work during surgery, by having hospitals require checklists of safer techniques and by using safer equipment, such as electric scalpels, clips and glues, Makary said.

In fact, up to 20 percent of surgical procedures could be done without using any sharp instruments at all, he said. However, an estimated 1 million needlestick injuries occur each year in the United States, Makary said.

Those injuries occur although the United States is the only nation that has a comprehensive needle safety program, said Ron Stoker, executive director of the International Sharps Injury Prevention Society, an organization devoted to reducing such injuries. The program came into existence when President Bill Clinton signed a bill passed by Congress in November 2000, Stoker said.

Under the law, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health reviews and updates safety measures, including the adoption of lower-risk equipment. Institutions that fail to use such equipment could be fined under the law, Stoker said, but "people don't use them, and now we have a lot of injuries."

"The biggest problem is that individual surgeons don't want to use safety equipment," Stoker said. Nurses are more likely to want to use such equipment, he said, and they are more likely to report accidents when they occur, he said.

Under current practices, the operating room will remain a high-risk area, with "sometimes hundreds of needles used and passed from surgeon to surgeon and from surgeon to nurse," Makary said. "We need to create an atmosphere of speaking up to ensure that no accident occurs."

More information

There's more on preventing needlestick injuries at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.