International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | July 2017 | Vol 5 | Issue 7 Page 2938 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Gita N et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2017 Jul;5(7):2938-2942 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Original Research Article Needle stick injuries in a tertiary care hospital in India: observations from a clinical audit N. Gita 1 *, N. P. Rao 2 INTRODUCTION Healthcare workers are exposed to a wide variety of biological material and are predisposed to various occupational hazards like exposure to drugs, blood borne and air borne infections, surgical trauma, 1 needle- stick injury (NSI), 2 stress and psychiatric conditions. 3 NSI is notably one of the most common and preventable occupational hazard amongst healthcare workers. 4,5 The actual incidence of NSI can be significantly higher than which is actually reported due to gross under-reporting. 6 Although authentic data on NSI from India is not available, as per a 2006 report, around 3-6 billion injections are given per year, of which 2/3rd injections are unsafe (62.9%). 7 NSI can be caused by hypodermic needles, blood collection needles, intravenous (IV) cannulas or needles used to connect parts of IV delivery systems. 8 NSI’s can be a serious threat to health care workers (HCW) and may increase the risk of transmission of blood-borne pathogens such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis-B virus (HBV) and hepatitis-C virus (HCV), safety practices should be 1 Department of Infection Control, Rao Nursing Home, Pune, Maharashtra, India 2 Department of Medicine (Intensive Care), Rao Nursing Home, Pune, Maharashtra, India Received: 23 May 2017 Accepted: 29 May 2017 *Correspondence: Dr. N. Gita, E-mail: dr.ngita@rnhpune.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Background: Needle stick injuries (NSI) is notably one of the most common and preventable occupational hazard amongst healthcare workers (HCW). This article reports the findings of a clinical audit for needle stick injuries (NSI) conducted at a tertiary care hospital, Pune, Maharashtra, India. Methods: Clinical audit was conducted at the 123 bed ISO 9002 certified and NABH accredited tertiary care hospital having safety protocols and incident reporting mechanisms in place. Data included all reported and unreported events of NSI. Information about the unreported events was collected through personal interview of all HCWs (99 men and 180 women) and employed doctors (23 men and 09 women). The nature of events and situations when NSI occurred were described. This being a only exploratory analysis is done. Results: With a total of 36,376 patients treated in the hospital during 2015, a total of 2,16,336 injections were given. Only 11 NSI events were documented during the year and all were reported voluntarily by the HCWs after the incident occurred. All events occurred in the HCWs and no doctors were involved in any of the NSI events. The number of NSI events per 1000 patients treated (IPD and OPD) was 0.302, i.e. 0.03%, and the annual incidence was 8.94% for the hospital beds. Female HCW’s (63.6%) were involved more in NSI than males (36.4%). Conclusions: Continuous education of all categories of HCWs plays a crucial role in capturing NSI. Staff should be encouraged to self-report without any delay and should treat each NSI as an emergency. Keywords: Clinical audit, Health care workers, Needle stick injury DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20172593