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OSACH: Planning Guide to the Implementation of Safety Engineered Medical Sharps
PREFACE The Ontario Safety Association for Community & Healthcare (OSACH) is a not-for-profit organization, designated as a Safe Workplace Association under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act (S.O. 1997). Our vision is to lead Ontario’s community and healthcare workplaces to be the healthiest and safest through innovative solutions. What are safety engineered medical sharps? Safety engineered medical sharps, or SEMS, are sharp medical devices or instruments designed to include safety features to help protect workers from injuries. Many other terms have also been used to describe SEMS, including Safety Engineered Devices (SEDs), Safe Medical Devices (SMDs) and Safety Engineered Medical Devices (SEMDs). As a Safety Association, we recognize that many devices used in health care practice can and should be “safety engineered,” whether that be for ergonomics, for exposure prevention or for general worker safety. For this reason we have chosen to refer to these devices as Safety Engineered Medical Sharps in order to be specific about devices that are medical sharps or, in some cases, devices that replace medical sharps. The Ontario Safety Association for Community & Healthcare (OSACH) recognizes that there are many excellent resources available for organizations to use in the planning and implementation of a sharps injury prevention program. Many of these documents have been referred to in the completion of this tool and are listed in the reference section at the end of this planning guide. Readers may wish to refer to these documents for more background information. The abundance of information related to sharps injury prevention is rather daunting. We have attempted in this planning guide to summarize in a step-by-step fashion the key issues that need to be addressed as an organization moves forward to implement and use safer sharps. This planning guide may also help health care organizations in addressing the legislated requirements under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act and establishing best practices in occupational health and safety.
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