A survey of pain physicians: Needlesticks injuries.

Objective: To investigate and characterize the incidence of needlestick injuries (NSI) in a sample of practicing pain medicine physicians, with the ultimate goal of aiding to prevent these injuries by raising awareness of their prevalence.

Design: A cross-sectional research survey.

Setting: A REDCap survey was emailed to physicians who had membership to the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

Subjects: Eligibility criteria included physicians who were actively practicing and identified as pain physicians who participated in procedures with needlesticks or sharps.

Methods: Basic demographics without identifiers were collected, including practice setting, years in practice, and training type. Respondents were asked to estimate the number of sharps-involved procedure days per week and per day. They were then asked to estimate the number of NSIs they sustained since completing training and in the past year.

Results: A total of 430 surveys were opened by email by potential participants, of which 124 responded (response rate 29%). Data from a total of 109 respondents that met inclusion criteria were included. Roughly 60% of respondents reported at least one NSI since completing training and approximately one-third had sustained more than three NSIs. In the last year, roughly 19% of providers reported at least one needlestick injury. The number of NSIs reported by providers since completing training was not significantly associated with practice setting, the number of procedure days per week, or the number of sharps-involved procedures per day. There was a significant relationship between years post-training and number of NSIs since completing training, with providers with more years post-training reporting higher incidences of NSIs (p < 0.0005). The number of NSIs since completing training and the number of NSIs were also associated, with providers that had sustained a greater number of total NSIs reporting a higher incidence of NSIs within the last year (p < 0.0005).

Conclusions: This study characterizes NSIs in a population of pain medicine physicians. These data warrant caution and will hopefully raise awareness amongst providers.