Needle Injuries Often Not Reported by Med Students

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Medical students are commonly stuck by needles but often fail to report their injuries to employee health services, placing them at risk for hepatitis, HIV and other blood borne diseases, results of a survey show.

The problem, Dr. Martin A. Makary of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore notes in a prepared statement, is that hospitals are not creating a "culture of speaking up. If people are not speaking up regarding their own safety concerns, it's probably a surrogate marker of people not speaking up about patient safety concerns."

Dan Henderson, third year medical student and Health Justice Fellow at the American Medical Student Association, in Reston, Virginia told Reuters Health: "When you are a medical student, new to a surgical or medical rotation, you are at the bottom of the totem pole. That totem pole really creates a lot of pressure not to speak up about safety issues, particularly things like needlesticks."

Makary and colleagues surveyed a group of surgical residents at 17 medical centers about needlestick injuries they sustained while in medical school or residency.

The report in the latest issue of Academic Medicine that 582 (83 percent) of 699 survey respondents experienced a needlestick injury as a resident and 415 (59 percent) as a medical student, with an average of 2 injuries per respondent in the student group.

Most of the needlestick injuries among medical students were self-inflicted, occurred in the operating room, or when the student felt rushed. "It's definitely an issue for medical students; I haven't had any needle sticks myself, although I have been close, but I have several friends who have been stuck," Henderson said.

In the survey, among 89 residents who sustained their most recent needlestick injury during medical school, 42, or 47 percent, did not report the incident to the appropriate person. The most common reason cited for the lack of reporting was the amount of time required to file a report.