Would you reuse a syringe? That’s ridiculous! (?)

What got me ranty, today.

"Medical educators in Alberta are questioning statements by the province’s acting chief medical officer of health that reusing syringes by injecting them into multiple intravenous tubes was common practice in recent years.

"Probably common until about sometime around the year 2000," Dr. Gerry Predy said on CBC Radio’s Edmonton AM on Tuesday. "We’re just trying to review all the documentation guidelines that were issued back then to see when exactly the practice changed."

On Monday, the province announced almost 2,700 former endoscopy and dental surgery patients at the hospital in High Prairie, Alta., would need to be tested for HIV, and hepatitis B and C, after it was revealed nurses at the hospital had been reusing syringes on IV lines for years.

Anita Molzahn, dean of nursing at the University of Alberta, said she has never seen syringe reused for IV lines in a hospital or taught to students in her 30-year career.

"I can only speak for what I teach myself, what I’ve seen others teach, what’s in textbooks. I’ve never seen advocacy of multiple uses of the same syringe," she said.

"In nursing education programs, we have never taught students to fill one syringe that would be used for multiple purposes. Students, nurses, are consistently taught to use a single syringe for a single patient for a single drug, and those syringes are not reused."

To which someone replied: "This story makes my skin crawl. I have no medical training but have enough sense to know that you don’t use a needle more than once. To think trained professionals are doing this and putting people’s lives at risk is totally unacceptable."

Um, noter, I think you didn’t really read the article all too thoroughly before making your conclusion.

1) That a doctor would comment on a practice that he likely has limited experience witnessing, let alone training people for, is slightly suspect in terms of the quality of the source of the statement. Not to mention it is common practice for some MDs to use multiple dose syringes in practice under certain circumstances, but certainly not between patients. This is an important distinction to consider.

2) The article isn’t talking about needles, it is talking about syringes. There is a difference. While against all health ethics/infection control practices, it is a comment about syringes being attached to IV lines, not about needles being reused between patients. A slight distinction, which doesn’t negate the fact that reusing syringes is not professional practice. So yes, needles would be obvious to most people not to reuse, but with the increased use of unregulated health care workers (ie, not RNs and MDs but unit aides etc.) people may have thought "there is no needle and it isn’t touching the patient directly, so why not reuse syringes?" I’m not justifying the risk these patients were subjected to, but I am saying I don’t think it is as black and white an issue of incompetence like your comment suggests.

3) To discredit an entire body of professionals by stating "to think trained professionals are doing this and putting people’s lives at risk is totally unacceptable" is ALSO unacceptable. Just because one rural hospital has had problems with quality control or policy management does not mean that all health professionals are incompetent and would think this kind of practice would be acceptable. It doesn’t make what has possibly happened right, but it also doesn’t mean this is a common phenomena to all health care scenarios.

4)This story also makes my skin crawl and makes me worry for any affected people. That said, perhaps it just reinforces the need to invest in trained, well paid health care workers to avoid situations where people are put at risk because there aren’t enough trained workers to keep them safe. We pay hockey players and CEOs of companies a disproportinate salary to people who keep you and your family alive and in good health, and you wonder why it is hard to keep good people on the front lines in short staffed, high stress areas. Money isn’t the only motivator, but it helps the wheels of supply of workers get some grease, which increases team work efficiency and effectiveness.

5)I also appreciate your comment, it brings some good points to consider even if it does simplify the issue. However, shaming professionals before investigating what is really the root of this potential risk to patients is counterproductive according to current policy and practice literature around patient safety cultures and prevention of medical error.

*end rant*

FGirl