Needlestick Injury Cases And Adherence To The Follow-Up Protocol Among Healthcare Workers In Selangor

@#Needlestick injury (NSI) is a serious occupational hazard against healthcare workers (HCWs) in a hospital setting with multiple implications, thus adherence to post-NSI management including follow-up protocol is crucial.This research was conducted to describe the distribution of NSI cases among HCWs working in Ministry of Health Malaysia (MOH)’s hospital in Selangor and adherence to a follow-up protocol, as well as the factors related to it.This was a cross-sectional quantitative study reviewing retrospectively all notified NSI cases in January-September 2016. Data were taken from Sharps Injury Surveillance (SIS) system and analyzed into descriptive and analytical statistics.There were 143 notified NSI cases. The majority of the cases were female(76.2%), Malay(60.1%), medical doctors(56.6%) and in a medical-based department (44.8%). The median age of NSI cases was 27 years old (IQR:5) and median years of employment was 1.5 (IQR:4.5). Most cases happened in a ward setting (58.7%) involving contaminated (95.8%) hypodermic needle (43.4%), occurred mostly during the procedure of drawing blood (23.1%). Only 86.7% of NSI cases were source-known and some were tested positive with blood borne pathogens. However, no occurrence of seroconversion among the injured HCWs detected. The overall adherence rate to the follow-up protocol was 72.3%. Multiple logistic regression yielded significant association between age, gender, department, device contamination, procedure conducted and source HBV status with adherence to follow-up of post-NSI protocol. Further comprehensive studies involving more determinants such as therapy-related factors and potential interventions are needed to optimize adherence rate to the follow-up protocol post-NSI.

Does the Definition Of Multisite Musculoskeletal Pain Influence Its Occurrence And The Assessement Of Physical Work Exposures?

Most people with musculoskeletal problem suffer pain at multiple body sites. The most frequent form of multisite pain studied is chronic widespread pain (CWP). Focusing solely on CWP may exclude the commoner form of multisite pain which is less wide spread. Therefore, studies on multisite pain which do not consider the spatial distribution of pain can be beneficial to tackle the overall problem of musculoskeletal pain. Nevertheless, multisite pain has been defined differently in the studies among workers. The absence of uniformed definition will jeopardize the understanding of this musculoskeletal problem. A review was thus carried out to identify how multisite pain were defined, how they influenced the reported occurrence of multisite pain and whether the definition determined the physical work exposures assessed in previous studies among worker. A systematic review was initiated by the search of electronic databases for multisite pain. Articles were included and excluded based on the selection criteria. A final of nine full text articles were reviewed. It was found that the difference in the definitions lies mainly in the body sites considered and the pain characteristics. The characteristics of pain influenced the multisite pain prevalence more than the sites.It wasdifficult to conclude whether the definition used determined the physical work exposures since only five studies were involved and three of them had similar research team which may explained the usage of similar exposures. The findings from this review, however, could not be inferred due to the small number of studies involved.