With all the complicated and technical problems that can occur in health care, it is extremely unsettling to think about the danger that might occur with getting a simple shot.
Outbreaks of hepatitis in the U.S. in the past few years have been blamed on unsafe injection procedures and are the principal cause of diseases in doctor’s offices, clinics and long-term care facilities.
Alarmingly, health care workers using new needles each time is not enough to be safe if a syringe is reused. Reusing syringes can actually infect someone with hepatitis or even HIV. Diseases can also be spread if a used needle or syringe is used to draw more medication from a multiple- dose vial. This contaminates the vial and makes additional patients vulnerable to being at risk for infection.
Reusing a needle on another patient after injecting a clean needle into a patient’s IV tubing for a saline flush is another harmful action. In this case, the health care worker assumes that because it only had contact with the sterile solution, it is safe. Contamination with microscopic amounts of disease can happen.
To avoid these kinds of dangerous errors, the CDC and some other private medical groups are going to begin an educational campaign with the slogan, “One Needle, One Syringe, Only One Time.”
For more information, you can look into this nonprofit educational group called Hepatitis Outbreaks National Organization or Reform or HONOReform. This group began with funds from a malpractice settlement over an infected syringe that was reused.
Two way for steering clear of this danger are to request single-dose vials of medicine and to use clinics that are affiliated with major hospitals, because hospitals tend to train their workers better than smaller health care facilities.
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