SALT LAKE CITY, UT, December 1 / MARKET WIRE/
ISIPS, the first international sharps
injury prevention group, announced that five recipients are being honored
for reducing sharps injuries with a Sharps Injury Prevention Award with an
additional 9 recipients receiving honorable mention awards. These awards
are part of the International Sharps Injury Prevention Awareness Month
activities being commemorated during December, 2008 starting with World
AIDS Day, December 1st.
A number of very worthy individuals were nominated for the ISIPS 2008
International Sharps Injury Prevention Awards. Nominations were reviewed by
a nominating committee, comprised of representatives from Terumo Medical,
Covidien, Retractable Technologies Inc., Qlicksmart, Smartstream Pty Ltd,
Managing Infection Control magazine and the International Sharps Injury
Prevention Society (ISIPS). We are grateful to these organizations for
sponsoring the awards this year.
We thank those individuals that have made a difference in getting the
message of sharps injury prevention to healthcare workers and employers
around the globe. We owe a debt of gratitude to those that have provided a
healthier climate for healthcare workers and others.
This prestigious award is given to only a few individuals each year. Five
deserving individuals have been notified and have accepted their 2008
International Sharps Injury Prevention Awards. In addition, several
individuals have been recognized with honorable mentions. ISIPS and
Managing Infection Control congratulate and thank these individuals for
making a difference in spreading the message of sharps injury prevention to
healthcare workers and employers around the globe. This award is one way of
saying thank you for reducing the number of healthcare workers and others
who are injured by needlestick and other sharps injuries each year.
The ISIPS 2008 Sharps Injury Prevention Awards have been given to honor
five individuals who have demonstrated creative, consistent contributions
to the field of needlestick prevention. The ISIPS 2008 International Sharps
Injury Prevention Award recipients are:
2008 Award Winners
Karen Daley, MS, MPH, RN, FAAN
Having spending the past 10 years advocating for healthcare workers and
raising awareness about the need for sharps injury prevention, Karen Daley,
MS, MPH, RN, FAAN, is currently a PhD candidate at Boston College Connell
School of Nursing, pursuing dissertation research related to the experience
of sharps injuries. Ms. Daley spent her entire nursing career as a
frontline caregiver and staff nurse at Brigham and Women's Hospital in
Boston where she began her career in 1973. She served as a senior staff
nurse in Brigham and Women's emergency department until January of 1999
when she left clinical practice due to a needlestick injury that resulted
in her infection with both HIV and hepatitis C. Since that time, while
continuing her role as president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association,
she became actively engaged as an advocate for legislation to mandate use
of safer needle devices in healthcare practice settings. Over the last
several years, she has traveled to more than 23 U.S. states as well as
Europe and Taiwan in her ongoing campaign to educate students and
healthcare administrators on the importance of needlestick injury
prevention. Ms. Daley was among those invited to the Oval Office to witness
President Clinton sign the "Needlestick Safety Prevention Act" into law on
November 6, 2000. She also spearheaded Massachusetts' passage of the
strongest needlestick prevention law in the country, which mandates
reporting of all sharps injuries to MA DPH. The statute links compliance
with injury reporting requirements and use of safer devices with
institutional licensure. "Witnessing and participating in passage of the
federal legislation in 2000 has been my most rewarding experience in
campaigning for sharps safety," states Daley. "I am motivated to raise
awareness to prevent injuries like mine. We know we can prevent a large
proportion of these injuries through proper training, and proper workplace
and engineering controls. It is a challenge to raise awareness among nurses
of the need to act on their rights and opportunities under the 2000 federal
law including the requirement that employers provide them with safety
devices where appropriate, and the opportunity they have to participate
directly in the selection and evaluation of safety devices in their work
settings. There is still a lot of work to do to eliminate preventable
injuries."
Elizabeth Donnenwirth, RN, BFA
Elizabeth Donnenwirth, RN, BFA, is a sharps safety specialist at Winchester
Hospital in Winchester, Mass. With the materials management department as
her home base and primary support, her position includes identifying and
reviewing appropriate new sharps safety products, many of which must also
pass infection prevention, IV therapy, AORN and patient safety guidelines.
Utilizing product presentations and one-on-one conversations, she conveys
the message of sharps safety and brings product options for consideration.
Encouraging honest feedback, she looks for the clinical drawbacks to using
specific sharps safety products not only to better refine her search for
the best option, but also to communicate with the manufacturers to
encourage better designs in the future. "To impact future safety designs
while looking for the best products on the current medical marketplace is
very exciting," Donnenwirth says. "It's more than just adding a cover to
the current tool; products are being redesigned entirely, and it's safer
for the clinician and the patient when the entire package and procedure is
refined or redeveloped." Using her specialized knowledge in sharps safety,
Ms. Donnenwirth has worked diligently with the hospital staff to find the
right safety products, and has shown patience and persistence in the
process of dealing with surgeons and their use of safety scalpels. She has
researched the use of cord blood kits, which have posed a challenge and has
advocated for safer blood collection procedures.
Kaj Johansson, Nurse
Beginning his nursing career in 1990, Kaj Johansson knows firsthand the
trauma experienced due to infection following a sharps injury. Diagnosed
with hepatitis C in 1999 resulting from an occupational injury, he endured
48 weeks of medical treatment and as of 2006 is free of infection. Mr.
Johansson has become a champion of sharps safety in Sweden, becoming a
public healthcare nurse advisor working with the non-profit hepatitis C
organization for the past six years. Developing the first network of
healthcare personnel in Sweden who have been transmitted with HCV in work,
Mr. Johansson used his experience and initiative in developing two
non-profit Web sites: www.vardnet.se for Swedish healthcare personnel, and
a safety products site in English www.careandsafe.eu. "It's a tremendous
trauma to a healthcare professional to be infected with hepatitis C and its
serious medical consequences," Johansson states. "My most important focus
is that no healthcare personnel have to experience what happened to me, or
those other healthcare personnel who have been infected in a similar way
all over the world. Not to forget all those unverified numbers who have
been infected with hepatitis C in their work without even knowing it! A
safe and secure working place with access to safety material and knowledge
about the risks regarding blood infection in their working environment is
the only way to change."
Adelisa Panlilio, MD, MPH
Dr. Adelisa Panlilio has focused her work of the past 20 years on assessing
the risks and preventing transmission of infections to and from healthcare
personnel. Recently retired from the U.S. Public Health Service after 20
years of service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in
Atlanta, Ga., she was the first EIS Officer in what was then the HIV
Activity in the Hospital Infections Program (HIP). During her tenure at CDC
she worked as a medical epidemiologist in the Division of Healthcare
Quality Promotion as part of a team that helped to characterize and assess
the risk of transmission of bloodborne pathogens in healthcare settings.
This team also developed and assessed guidelines and measures for the
prevention of such transmission. Observational studies of occupational
exposure, prospective surveillance of exposed healthcare personnel, and
seroprevalence surveys conducted by investigators at CDC (including Dr.
Panlilio) and elsewhere demonstrated that the greatest risk of bloodborne
virus infection was associated with percutaneous exposures to infected
blood. Clearly the best method of preventing such transmission would be
through preventing percutaneous injuries. Mid-career, Dr. Panlilio led a
group that estimated the number of percutaneous injuries sustained annually
among hospital-based healthcare personnel, using data from the CDC's
National Surveillance for Healthcare Workers (NaSH) and EPINet. This
figure, for 1997-98, was that approximately 1,000 percutaneous injuries
occurred daily in U.S. hospitals. Most recently, she revised the Public
Health Service recommendations on the management of occupational exposures
to HIV. Her primary work in sharps safety as she retired was to help bring
to life the Healthcare Personnel Safety Component of the National
Healthcare Network that will enable tracking of occupational sharps
injuries, continuing this function from NaSH, which she oversaw for the
last seven years. "Prevention of sharps injuries requires a multi-faceted
approach that includes changing the culture of safety, use of engineering
controls and modification of work practices," Dr. Panlilio states. "CDC can
generate guidelines and lead discussions about sharps safety but the
optimal method of ensuring adherence to its recommended practices to ensure
sharps safety is what I see as the greatest challenge in sharps injury
prevention."
Abimbola Sowande, MD
A public health physician who has been practicing for 30 years, with the
last 10 years actively in public health, Dr. Abimbola Sowande is the
country director of the Making Medical Injection Safer (MMIS) project in
Nigeria. The project has brought greater awareness of needlestick injuries
to the government of Nigeria and the medical community as a whole. Dr.
Sowande pioneered safe injection pilot programs in Nigeria, including
unsafe syringe needle recapping practices which were reduced from 76
percent during the baseline study to 18 percent and reduction of the risk
of needle injuries by the use of safety boxes increased by 75 percent.
Needlestick injuries were reduced from 46 percent to 6 percent. She has
helped to spread the lessons to more sites in Nigeria hence promoting IS
education of healthcare workers in African's most populous country with a
very weak health system. The National Administration for Food, Drug and
Control (NAFDAC) has thrown its weight behind use of auto-disposable
syringes and use of safety boxes in Nigeria. NAFDAC in conjunction with the
Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the Medical and Dental Council has
given a grace period to manufacturers and importers of syringes to
phase-out reusable syringes in favor of auto-disable syringes. Local
companies have already commenced manufacture of auto-disable syringes and
safety boxes. There is a review of curriculum of nurses, environmental
health officers and community health officers to include appropriate
injection safety messages, including post-exposure management. Advocacy to
provide free hepatitis B vaccines to clinical officers, nurses and medical
waste handlers is also going on. The project has also trained journalists
to educate the general public on the danger of demanding for unnecessary
injections from their health givers, scavenging in medical waste and
promotion of oral medications.
Honorable Mentions
Nominations for this year's awards have been truly outstanding. We would
like to recognize the following individuals for the contributions they have
made. It is through their efforts that the healthcare work environment
continues to improve in the many areas impacting safe sharps practices.
Salisu Abubakar, RN, ICN is an infection control nurse and member of
the hospital infection control committee at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital in
Kano, Nigeria.
Carol Cagle, BS, MT(ASCP)SM is an infection prevention and control
manager at Holy Cross Hospital in Chicago.
Alexandra (Sandy) Derevnuk, RN is the blood and body fluid exposure
(BBFE) coordinator at Mount Sinai Medical Center, a 1,100-bed teaching
medical center in the heart of New York City.
Dennis J. Ernst, MT(ASCP) is the director of the Center for Phlebotomy
Education Inc. in Corydon, Ind. and has been actively advocating
needlestick prevention through education since 1997.
Dr. Zeinab M. Hassan, RN, PhD has accomplished pioneer work in Jordan
in the area of sharps injuries among healthcare workers and is an assistant
professor on the faculty of nursing at Hashemite University in Zarqa,
Jordan.
Susie Rich, RN has been responsible for significant changes within
the emergency department (ED) at Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand where
she serves as an associate clinical nurse manager.
Glen Riverstone, RN has been an emergency nurse in Brisbane, Australia
since graduating with a Bachelor in Health Science Nursing degree three
years ago.
Joel Schoenfeld, retired chairman of UNIVEC, is dedicated to helping
others around the globe in reducing the exposure to bloodborne pathogens
resulting from the reuse of needles and needlestick injuries and formerly
worked with the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC)
and the World Health Organization.
Marcia Williams, RN, BSN is an employee health nurse at Arrowhead
Regional Medical Center (ARMC) in Colton, Calif. where she oversees
employee health services for more than 3,500 employees.
For information contact:
International Sharps Injury Prevention Society
801-280-8797
Ron Stoker
Email Contact
website www.isips.org
