FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 5, 1999
CONTACT:
Michelle Nawar,
202-651-7122
Dawn Marks,
202-651-7198
rn=realnews@ana.org
www.nursingworld.org/rnrealnews
ANA's "Safe Needles Save Lives" Campaign Scores Important Victory With Release of New OSHA Directive
Washington, D.C. – The American Nurses Association's (ANA) "Safe Needles Save Lives" campaign scored an important victory for ANA and its constituent members, the state nurses associations (SNAs), when the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on November 5 published a long-awaited directive which will live-saving impact on nurses by effectively mandating the use of safer needlestick devices nationwide. This is the revised Compliance Directive (CPL 2.0 - 2.44D) to the 1991 OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (BPS).
"The hard work of ANA/SNA members across the country through ANA's ‘Safe Needles Save Lives' campaign has paid off," says ANA President Beverly L. Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN. "This new OSHA directive requires the evaluation and use of safer needlestick devices to prevent injuries and exposure to blood-borne pathogens. This will save the lives of thousands of nurses."
On November 6, Charles Jeffress, Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA attended the joint meeting between the ANA Constituent Assembly and the Nursing Organization Liaison Forum to announce this reinterpretation of the BPS which becomes effective immediately.
The Compliance Directive provides instructions for OSHA compliance officers (inspectors) when they inspect health care institutions to cite employers for failing to use engineering (safer needlestick devices) and work practice controls. These instructions specify that, "Where engineering controls will reduce employee exposure either by removing, eliminating, or isolating the hazards, they must be used."
OSHA will also cite health care institutions "if a combination of engineering and work practice controls used by the employer does not eliminate or minimize exposure." OSHA encourages employers to involve employees in the selection of effective engineering controls to improve employee acceptance of newer devices and to improve the quality of the selection process. ANA will work with the Training for Development of Innovative Control Technology (TDICT) Project to develop a tool that includes guidelines for the involvement of frontline health care workers in the selection of safe needle devices.
ANA will work with SNAs to file OSHA complaints to assure that health care institutions implement safer devices as required by the BPS.
"The new directive is a significant new protection for the lives of registered nurses who serve every day on the front lines of health care," says Malone. "The ANA and the SNAs intend to make full use of this tool and to make sure it is widely known and understood. Without safe needle devices, nurses have all too often found themselves fighting not only for the lives of their patients, but for their own lives, after exposure to bloodborne pathogens following accidental needlestick injuries."
The new OSHA Compliance Directive can be found as a link from ANA's "Safe Needles Save Lives" web page: http://www.needlestick.org/. The extensive appendices accompanying the directive include device evaluation criteria developed by ANA's new training partner, the TDICT Project; a needlestick prevention device cost calculation worksheet; three CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR): "Immunization of Health-Care Workers. Recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (APIC) and the Hospital Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC)," "Recommendation for Prevention and Control of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Infection and HCV-Related Chronic Disease," and "Public Health Service Guidelines for the Management of Health-Care Worker Exposure to HIV and Recommendation for Postexposure Prophylaxis"; as well as a sample Exposure Control Program. A listing of needlestick prevention products can be found on the California OSHA (CalOSHA) web page www.ohb.org/sharps.htm.
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ANA is the only full-service professional organization representing the nation's 2.6 million registered nurses through its 53 constituent associations. ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
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