Factors Associated with Needlestick Injuries in Health Care Occupations: A Systematic Review

Needlestick and sharps injuries (NSIs), are
among the main job-related injuries that health care workers
experience. In fact, contraction of hepatitis B or hepatitis C from
work-related NSIs is one of the most common occupational
hazards among health care workers.
Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the factors
associated with NSIs in health care occupation.
Materials and Methods: In this study, a systematic and
purposive review with emphasis on the research question
was run to retrieve, evaluate and consolidate the required
information. The following four key words were used to search
for the relevant articles published from January 1998 to May
2015: NSI health care workers, risk factor and factors associated,
in Science direct, EBSCO Host, PubMed, ProQuest, SID and
Cochrane Library. Several steps of evaluation were taken to
select and analyse the full texts of relevant articles. According
to the inclusion criteria, we fnally selected 11 articles from the
18642 retrieved articles.
Results: The data of the analysed articles indicated that the
highest incidence of NSIs was seen in nurses and that the
associated factors were age, level of education, number of
shifts per month and history of related training. The highest
rate of NSIs was related to instrument preparation followed by
injection and recapping of used needles. Findings show that
health care workers suffer a high rate of needlestick injuries.
conclusion: It was seen that device, location, or action cannot
be separately considered as responsible for all types of the
NSIs. Rather, each of them has a contribution to the NSIs.
Nevertheless, factors with higher frequency should be given a
higher priority.