IT'S an ordinary day at the hospital where you work as a nurse. You've seen fairly run-of-the mill cases: colds, a minor bronchial infection, and two people with the flu. A patient checks in with a fever, body aches, nausea, and chills, as well as a rash consisting of dense, firm lesions.
UNLIKE the days of long ago, in our modern workplaces the armor of Personal Protective Apparel (PPA) awaits almost any situation from the extreme to the daily grind.
EXPOSURE to bloodborne pathogens (BBPs) is an occupational hazard for many workers, including, among others, health care workers, law enforcement officers, fire service personnel, funeral service employees, body piercers, day care workers, environmental service workers, and wastewater workers.
WHAT do a police officer approaching a suspicious looking person and a quality control technician inspecting an integrated circuit board have in common? They both need good visual acuity.
WHAT is your company's agenda when an employee cuts himself while handling a knife (or any other incident that induces bleeding)? What happens if an employee contracts Hepatitis B (HBV) or the HIV virus while rendering first aid or CPR to a critically injured employee?
ASTHMA is an illness characterized by intermittent breathing difficulty including chest tightness, wheezing, cough, and shortness of breath. It is a serious and sometimes fatal condition. Occupational asthma is defined as asthma caused by workplace exposures to biological agents.
HE sounded just like a hundred other managers: "We don't need a trained first aid team for our site. We're only five minutes from the hospital, fer cryin' out loud!" His pronouncement was right up there with "We can't afford to do first aid training in this economy" and "If someone gets hurt we'll just call 911, that's what they're for." These are common proclamations from people who do not necessarily see the value of first aid teams and the associated training.
THE federal government's bioterrorism preparations have moved forward significantly this year. The best example is Project Bioshield, an initiative President Bush unveiled in February to give the government blank-check spending authority to buy new vaccines. With an assured buyer, vaccine manufacturers will pursue the R&D necessary to confront smallpox, anthrax, botulinum toxins, and other bioterror threats, the project assumes.
IN many occupations--even outside of hospitals and other health care environments--workers run the risk of being exposed to potentially hazardous bloodborne pathogens and bodily fluids. In fact, it is estimated that approximately 5.6 million workers in the United States are at risk of exposure to bloodborne pathogens.
PRIOR to the early 1980s and the introduction of AIDS into our society, infection control practices were designed almost exclusively to protect the patient from developing a nosocomial infection--an infection acquired after admission to the hospital.