Percutaneous injuries in home healthcare settings.

HOME HEALTH CARE HAS BEEN ONE OF THE fastest-growing sectors in the health care industry, but the prevention of occupational exposures in this setting has not received the attention it deserves. Of the more than 8 million U.S. health care workers who work in hospitals and other health care settings1, between 650,000 and 850,000 are employed in home health care.2 There are few data and no national estimates on the number of needlestick injuries that occur each year in home health care settings. Perhaps because of this lack of documentation, some recent state bills on needlestick prevention, such as the one passed in August in Massachusetts, overlook home health care and other non-hospital settings. But does the absence of data mean absence of risk? From 1993 through 1998, 84 hospitals provided EPINet data on percutaneous injuries to the International Health Care Worker Safety Center. Most of the data were from in-patient settings, but in some instances, home health care agencies were associated with EPINet hospitals, and percutaneous injuries reported from those sites were entered into the EPINet database. Figures 1, 2 and 3 compare the characteristics of percutaneous injuries occurring in hospital patient rooms to those occurring in home health care settings. There were 7,101 percutaneous injuries reported by hospital workers in patient rooms during the six-year interval. Workers’ in home health care settings reported 290 injuries during the same time period. Nurses sustained the overwhelming majority of Percutaneous Injuries in Home Health Care Settings