title: Surgeon's Perspective with Regard to Needle-Stick Injuries and Adherence to the Post Exposure Protocol

Introduction & Needle-Stick (NS) injury refers to accidental puncture of the skin with sharps contaminated with body fluids (like blood) during surgery or other medical procedures. Such an incident is very important because of the risk for serious viral infection transmission; there exists a national protocol for Needle-Stick exposure; however most surgeons do not follow this protocol. The aim of this study was to evaluate the Surgeons’ perspective with regards to NS injuries and adherence to post-exposure protocol.
This Cross-sectional study was carried out at 5 major general hospitals in Tehran, Between January to May 2013; 318 surgeons who had a history of Needle-Stick injury were assessed and filled the questionnaire.
Among 318 surgeons, 177 (55.66%) were male and 141 (34.44%) were female. Mean age was 47.76±8.95 years; 291 (91.51%) of all participants had been vaccinated for HBV. All surgeons had NS injury at least 4 times during their practice. Adherence to national protocol after exposure was seen only in 92 (28.9%) of surgeons during follow up; 57 (17.9%) had no distinct NS report and had no follow-up, and others incompletely followed through with NS protocol.
Most surgeons regard NS injuries as a trivial incident and did not follow through with NS injury protocol. Apparently this is mainly due to the fact that importance of this issue is disregarded. Thus continuing education courses are needed in this regard.