takecake

I thank everyone for their replies, but I guess I did not give enough information initially. Whenever I have told her she needs to put her sharps up, there's variable results. If she's not in a bad mood, she'll say, "Oh - okay," if she's already angry because she is in a hurry or the patients are late or for any other reason, she says, "I will," like I'm or the other staff is an idiot for even suggesting she wouldn't. The problem is, she has been hounded and no actual change has occured. My issue is with management more so. I've gotten to the point that I know she doesn't care about us or our health, and my immediate supervisors have chastised her before with no effect, but when higher management was involved, they essentially condoned her actions. I know that the company is responsible once I have been stuck, but what can I do to prevent is legally (besides quit). When I checked the OSHA site, it was convoluted and I couldn't find any information besides that there needed to be engineering controls to prevent unnecessary injury, but nothing about individuals who consistently endanger. Or if I can file a claim if nothing has yet happened. It didn't have a lot of information which was why I came here. I'm also wondering that, since the doctor has privileges to work at the facility but is not technically in my chain of command, how is she made responsible on a legal standpoint? Does her insurance raise because she hurt somebody even if that person is not a patient. Does she get reviewed by her licensing board? So I guess my questions really come down to: 1. Is my company responsible for her consistent safety risk (in such a way we can prevent ourselves as employees from getting hurt, not after the fact). Especially now since it has gone all the way to the top, and they are not concerned. and 2. How is she legally (not ethically. I think everybody but her agrees she ethically responsible) responsible for her sharps, and again, in a way that we can curtail her before she hurts one of us. And I would again, like to thank everybody for your replies. It is a relief to finally feel like me and my coworkers are not going insane when it comes to this issue. It's destroying the previously congenial view I have of my supervisors and the doctors I know who are on the board who have sat by and done nothing in wait because - as we all learned in nursing school - choosing to do nothing is a choice.

Hello, I'm a recent change over to recovery room and I'm encountering a problem I have never had before. I work in a day surgery. One eye doctor "blocks at the bedside" on her cataract patients, meaning we take the patients into the PACU to give them a bed so she can injects local anesthetic into the patient's eye before going to surgery. The problem is that she leaves her used needles everywhere. This is a recurrent problem that has been going on for the full 5 months I have been at my current job and didn't seem new even when I started. We have sharps boxes within two feet of her if not closer when she does this, but she still leaves needles in dangerous places - not just for us nurses, but for the patients as well. One day while I was assisting her, I had to write 6 incident reports for all six needles left in patient care areas: stuck inside a set of towels on the countertop, one hidden behind the oxygen set up, one on the floor underfoot, one right next to the sharps box, and, I am not sure which of these made me most angry: she had carried one over to the nurse's station and dropped the used syringe in the middle of the workspace, but later in the day, I was helping to clean up, and was clearing a stretcher of linens when the needle dropped out of the dirty linens, missing my foot by two inches. This is a consistent issue that bothers everybody at work, and through sheer luck, no one has yet to be stuck that I know of - though at the rate we find uncapped needles in the beds postoperatively, I could not be sure the patients have not been stuck with their own needles while moving while half-conscious. Management thus far has simply stated that every time we find uncapped needles to write incident reports and they would take them to the board of directors. The board of directors meeting was last week. And through the grapevine, the way it basically played out was that a few of the doctors were horrified, but the essential resolution was that we nurses would just have to be really careful, and always know where the needles are - like we can know ahead of time that needles are hidden in the sheets after the patients have been to OR and watch her like a hawk while charting, maintaining airways, and transporting patients. Even if the words spoken in the meeting were not actually so pro burden-the-nurse, the fact is, no changes are going to be made. She luckily only works with us once a week, but each time she is there it feels like we're all being placed at risk to be poked with a hot needle. It's very fast-paced for recovery, and we've had so many close calls that I hate the days she's there because it might be the day I end up in the ER for blood tests because she left needles next to supplies or in beds or (as I found once) under the stretcher halfway beneath a patient's shoe. So I'm wondering what I can do about it. Since no one has been hurt yet and because sharps boxes are all over the place, is this an OSHA violation? She's a known danger with a sharp paper trail a mile long, but do we have to wait until some one gets pricked with a hot needle before anything can be done to change this? Or are we going to have to keep playing Russian Roulette with this woman until some one finally gets hurt? Any advice on how to improve this situation or legal information on workplace safety would be greatly appreciated. :heartbeat