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1. Evaluation of the Needlestick Injury Alert--NEW--The mission of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)is to promote "safety and health at work for all people through research and prevention." NIOSH not only investigates and identifies occupational safety and health hazards, the Institute also develops recommendations for controlling those hazards. In some cases, NIOSH distributes these recommendations about the hazard directly to affected workplaces.

One way that NIOSH accomplishes this is through the Alert. The Alert is usually a six to ten page document that outlines the causes and detection of the hazard and recommendations for controlling the risk to workers. One of the central goals of the Alert is to educate employers and encourage them to take steps to reduce the risks to their workers. It is also important that the recommendations in the Alert provide them with sufficient information.

The Alert chosen for this study concerns the risk of needlestick injuries (NSI) to health care workers. Although there is not precise information about the frequency of NSI in the United States, it has been estimated that approximately 800,000 of these injuries occur each year. As a result of NSI, health care workers can be exposed to HIV, and the Hepatitis B and C viruses. It is believed that the incidence of NSI account for the majority of occupational transmission of these pathogens to health care workers.

In the proposed study, NIOSH will send the Alert to one of two individuals with formal responsibility for employee health and safety in hospitals--Directors of Infection Control and Directors of Health and Safety. NIOSH will then follow-up with a randomly selected sample of hospitals at two points in time. The recipient of the Alert will be interviewed two to six weeks after the Alert was sent and ten to fourteen weeks later, the other key individual will be interviewed.

Broadly, the goals of the study are to: (1) assess whether, and under what circumstances, the Alert encourages employers to adopt control measures, and (2) ascertain whether the information in the Alert assists employers in implementing control measures. Overall, the hope is that the study will reveal ways of making the Alert a more effective tool for primary prevention. The total burden hours are 294.

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                                                      No. of       Avg. burden
                                       No. of       responses/     per response
          Respondents               respondents     respondent       (in hrs.)
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Directors of Infection Control......  450             1              0.3333
Directors of Health and Safety......  450             1              0.3333
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CERTIFIED TO BE A TRUE COPY OF THE ORIGINAL

Certifying Officer
[FR Doc. 99-20944 Filed 8-12-99; 8:45 am]

This page was last updated on August 17, 1999