EU Guidelines Introduced for Protection of NHS Workers
Karen Jennings, the Head of Health at UNISON, has expressed her happiness with the enactment of new guidelines by the European Union intended to ensure the safety of the NHS employees. These employees have been facing the problem of injuries from medical equipment like needles. Ms. Jennings stated that the guidelines that were issued the previous week are a result of long standing efforts by the European hospital and the healthcare employers’ association, HOSPEEM.
Currently, at least 100,000 such needle related incidents take place every year. As Jennings indicated, in addition to mental agony, the injuries by contaminated equipments may cause deadly diseases like AIDS and hepatitis.
The guidelines have been issued after an agreement was entered into between HOSPEEM and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), and they adopt a three pronged approach. They seek to prevent the injuries, to provide help in case people get injured and have procedures in place to follow up on the problem. IOSH courses from Workplace Law Training are designed to give managers and supervisors all they need to know to help handle health and safety in their teams; click on IOSH Health and Safety for more information
Jennings also commented on the economic aspect of providing better protection. She said that safer needles are not very expensive and can be easily provided. On the other hand, the economic and social cost of treatment of health staff once they get hurt, the payment of compensation to them, loss of manpower etc. combined together, is much greater and thus it is wiser to instead use better equipment and keep the workers safe. The health sector employees should not always be terrified of catching an infection, she insisted.
