Physicians Leaving Sharps Behind

[Joshua21]

:angryfire I'm trying to find some research on how hospitals or nurses are dealing with physicians leaving sharps for other staff to clean up. Not so much on a personal level but on a hospital wide administrative level. Can anyone point out any discussions on here, research links or plans of action to change a dangerous culture in my hospital? :angryfire

[heart queen]

Have you considered using Employee Health, who are responsible via OSHA to minimize employee risk, monitor exposure stats and write policy to work with the medical director, and they, well in my place, would be the ones responsible for a policy initiation that requires the docs to properlly dispose.

Now this piece of paper does not give you automatic compliance, but once you identify the repeat offender, all your leverage is there before hand. Let's face it, the doc's leaving the sharps out are for the most part the ones that will require the chain of command, or at least several verbal reminders to the existing policy.

My hospital holds every MD and nurse accountable to policy. That's why once we've gathered info that something is a problem, proceed with policy and educate staff once initiated.

Personally, I know the few who leave a swan or cvp tray full of sharps at the bedside, a few years ago I started to say "Can I place the dressing while your cleaning up your sharps?" and when the knuckle head dares to say "take care of this...", looks at the sharps, never makes eye contact and darts out the door.... YES I do approach him and say "you don't intend to leave your tray of sharps at my patients bedside do you?".(spoken in the help me to understand this situation voice ):rotfl:

[teeituptom, BSN, RN]

This may have worked. However, passiveagressive behavior does not belong in a professional enviorment. It is not adult behavior.

Simply telling the person that he needs to dispose of his sharps so that others are not put at risk should be enough. Any responsible and considerate adult should respond favorabley to this. If the physician behaves like a child then he needs to be written up and this should be carried up the chain of command. He does not have a right to put others at risk.

If you do not get satisfaction from the chain of command then OSHA would certainly be interested in this.

Call me king of the passiveaggressive

It worked

it was fun

we all loved it

[AmiK25]

When ANY physician (attending or resident) leaves sharps in my patient's room, I go find them and politely ask them to clean them up! If they have already left the unit, I page them and politely ask them to come back and clean them up. It has only happened a few times, but I have never had one say no, nor have I ever had them leave their sharps more than once.