Conference highlights needle-stick risk

IT WAS a normal working day for Karen Daley in the summer of 1998 and she was busy in the emergency department of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where she had worked as a senior nurse for 23 years.

A colleague asked her to take some blood from a difficult patient which she did, turning then to dispose of the needle in a nearby used -needles container.

She didn’t notice the box had been overfilled but as she dropped the needle in, she realised she had been pricked by a second needle. The injury caused her to bleed through her plastic gloves.