Now about safe injection practices.
The needle-stick prevention act requires appropriate commercially available
and effective safer medical devices designed to eliminate or minimize
occupational exposure.
Needles and other sharps must be discarded in a rigid, leak proof, puncture resistant container.
It's important to remember not to bend, sheer, break, or recap needles.
But if you must recap, use a one-handed method, which I'm going to demonstrate now.
Unless you have a recapping device,
we must use the one-handed recapping technique
to safely recap used or unclean needles.
Once we have covered the tip of the needle,
at the base of the cap, pull down slightly to set in place,
and then discard the whole syringe and needle set.
Or if it's a multi-dose purpose, now we can go on to the next step to change needles.
Remember that it's important to use aseptic technique to avoid contamination
of sterile injection equipment.
Do not administer medications from a syringe to multiple patients,
even if the needle or cannula on the syringe is changed.
Needles, cannula, and syringes are sterile single-use items.
They should not be reused for another patient,
nor to access a medication or solution that might be used for a subsequent patient.
Use fluid infusion and administration sets.
For example: intravenous bags, tubing, and connectors,
for one patient only,
and dispose appropriately after use.
Consider a syringe or needle or cannula contaminated once it has been used
to enter or connect to a patient's intravenous infusion bag,
or an administration set.
Use a single-dose vial for parenteral medications whenever possible.
And do not administer medications from single-dose vials,
or ampules to multiple patients,
or combine left-over contents for later use.
If a multi-dose vial must be used, both the needle or cannula and syringe used to access the multi-dose vial
must be sterile, as I'm going to show you now.
Let's say that we have, for training purposes we're using these items,
we have a sterile syringe.
And we use a sterile needle that's purpose is to draw up medication from a multi-dose vial.
We use an alcohol wipe to again, clean the top of the new multi-dose vial of medication.
We draw up some air.
Inject it into the multi-dose vial, and we draw up our medication as appropriate per protocol.
Let's say that we now have our medication drawn up,
again using the single hand recapping procedure to recap this.
We're going to remove the needle that we used to draw up the medication,
and choose a brand new, sterile needle,
that would be appropriate for delivering the medication into the patient themselves.
Do not keep multi-dose vials in the immediate patient treatment area,
and store in accordance with the manufacturers recommendations.
Remember to discard if the sterility is compromised or questionable.
Do not use bags or bottles of intravenous solution as a common source of supply for multiple patients.
And infection control practices that are very important to remember,
especially for lumbar puncture procedures,
is to wear a surgical mask when placing a catheter or injecting material into the spinal canal,
or subdural space.
For example, during myelograms, lumbar puncture, and spinal or epidural anesthesia.