Needlestick safety survey

The research is designed to gain insight into needlestick practices and injury levels of dental nurses, so that training and sharps safety provision can be effectively tailored.

Jane Dalgarno, president of the British Association of Dental Nurses, comments,“This is a follow up to our 2014 survey to see if, three years on, the Safer Sharps Regulations have made any difference to the number of needlestick injuries being suffered.  In the 2014 survey, just over half (51 per cent) of the 1,216 respondents reported that they had received a needlestick injury, with 60 per cent of these having had more than one needlestick injury at work, and 11 per cent having had a needlestick injury within the last year.”  

In the UK, a small, but still troubling, number of healthcare workers develop potentially life-threatening diseases as a result of a sharps injury. The survey will ask questions around whether dental nurses have ever had a needlestick injury, how many they have had, how they obtained them and how they were handled, as well as some further questions around the needlestick safety regulations.