The Most Dangerous Job in Surgery?

Your pre-op nurses might be asking for hazard pay and safety IV catheters after reading the results of an alarming new study that found that 1 in 2 nurses experience blood exposure on their skin or in their eyes, nose or mouth at least once a month when inserting or removing peripheral IV catheters.

Conducted by the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center at the University of Virginia, the study looked at the practices of 379 nurses nationwide who place IV catheters. It was published in the December issue of the journal Nursing 2011. The study didn't include exposures from needlesticks.

Exposure to blood carries the risk of infection from pathogens such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B, hepatitis C and MRSA. The study, sponsored by BD Medical, endorses the use of safety IV catheters to help reduce needlestick exposures.

Healthcare workers place more than 300 million short peripheral intravenous catheters every year in the United States alone. The study shows nurses are at risk of exposure to blood pathogens in 128 of 100,000 IV catheter insertions. The more commonly recognized risk of exposure to bloodborne pathogens from a needlestick injury with non-safety catheters is 6.6 per 100,000 devices.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define at-risk blood exposure as "contact of mucous membrane (MME) or exposed skin (chapped, abraded or afflicted with dermatitis) with blood, tissue or other body fluids that are potentially infectious."

Dan O'Connor