OSHA’s Needlestick Safety Act is turning out to be the most difficult standard with which funeral homes must comply. It requires non-management employees with exposure to needles to conduct tests each year on safer sharps. These test trials are to be documented and retained in the event the funeral home is inspected.

  Failure to comply with the Act has produced fines of approximately $4000 to very small firms. One firm had just hired their first non-management embalmer a few months earlier. When inspected, OSHA noticed a traditional replaceable blade scalpel in the instruments drawer. Since the funeral home did not have a test trial that stated there were times the non-management employee preferred to use the traditional scalpel, a fine was triggered. It also triggered OSHA requesting a slew of new annual paper work.

  This funeral home was not using a compliance consultant at the time they were inspected. I don’t think they have one now. I did visit with him on the phone. The owner faxed me the papers that the OSHA inspector sent him. I felt most were unnecessary but it wasn’t my place to give an opinion and the funeral director had already done all the requested reports.

  While this Act covers all businesses, it was clearly intended for the healthcare industry. They are the industry that is seeing an explosion of “safer needlestick and sharp devices”. Our industry is so out of the loop that distributors not only fail to brief you on any new devices, they are unaware there is a Needlestick Safety Act.

  In a phlebotomy lab, the instrument salesman may walk in with an orange. He or she intends to use that orange to demonstrate new safe syringes or new safe scalpels. Sometimes our distributors also carry oranges on their route. When they do, it is because they intend to eat them. It is never to use the orange in a demonstration. That isn’t done in our industry. Here, the supplier eats the orange, sells fluids, and occasionally takes an instrument order, period. Instruments are jobbed items.

  Most funeral homes find it awkward to comply with this Act. They often end up complying by fitting square pegs into round holes. On my customer network, there are many funeral homes with zero non-managers with exposure to sharp instruments. There are many with only one non-management employee. A few firms might have several, but these are the exceptions and not the rule.

  For our purposes, let us pretend that there are three non-management embalmers or employees that have contact with sharp instruments. Let’s do a count of those sharp instruments. Most funeral homes use suturing needles, aneurism hooks, forceps, scissors, and adult or infant trocars. We rarely count the aneurism hooks or forceps unless they are really pointed and can injure the employee in the same way as a needlestick would. Trocars can stick the employee, but I have not run across a safe trocar in my literature. I also have not read a safe scissors study.

  There is actually an entire industry that is forming around the Needlestick Safety Act. I get their mail. I get their product evaluations. I can tell you about oodles of safer lancets and syringe pens for diabetics. I can tell you about suturing alternatives that utilize creams that promotes healing the injured skin. I can go on and on. I receive on average four emails a day. In a year, I don’t find anything new about safe needles. We already have a safe scalpel and safe syringe. Using those resources did not really help me navigate test trials for my funeral home customers.

  Sometimes, the rubber hits the road and the wrong thing happens. In this case, I chose to look at the intent of the Needlestick Safety Act. It was clearly to reduce infections, not just in hospitals but in all workplaces where non-management employees are exposed to sharp instruments. The standard requires all employers that use sharps to make at least one study per year.

  I include one suggested study for consideration in each newsletter. Yet, rarely is my suggestion for the review of sharp instruments. My suggestions are more likely to be about special gloves that are designed to reduce the risk of a needlestick. I might choose to write about lighting systems that allow employee to see better. I will suggest a study between new safe scalpels and the old type traditional scalpel. Then if employees find the traditional scalpel has a superior feel or grip or weight, they can say so and having that old scalpel is permitted.

  The standard requires a documented study every year. Few funeral homes are in compliance. We have been fortunate in that the way we interpret the Act is being accepted by inspectors. I wasn’t certain it would be. This is one case where in discussions with an OSHA inspector, it helped that I happen to be a funeral director and embalmer. Sometimes, you just get lucky.