BMJ  2007;335:10-11 (7 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.39262.449850.DB

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Most US surgeons in training get needlestick injuries, few report them

Janice Hopkins Tanne

New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

By the end of their five years of training in general surgery almost every US surgeon has received at least one needlestick injury. The average is about eight, according to an anonymous survey of 699 residents at 17 medical centres published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2007;356:2695-9).

Surgeons in training have more needlestick injuries than attending surgeons, scrub nurses, anaesthetists, and other operating room personnel. They have six times as many needlestick injuries as medical residents.

More than half of the injuries (53%) involved a high risk patient—one with HIV or hepatitis B or C infection or one with a history of injecting drugs. More than half of the residents (51%) did not report the injury to the employee health service at their institution.

The coauthor, Mark Sulkowski, associate professor of medicine and medical director of the viral hepatitis centre at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told . . . [Full text of this article]


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Under-reporting of needlestick injuries is a universal problem
Chidi C Ekwobi, et al.
bmj.com, 12 Jul 2007 [Full text]

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