Rank: Super forum user 
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Does anyone have any insight into when the HSE's promised guidance is likely to appear?
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Rank: Super forum user
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Apologies for bumping this! - Anybody??
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Rank: Super forum user
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Well according to the HSE website the UK does not have to apply (transpose) the directive until May this year. They will do this with a regulation/statutory instrument. The guidance wont’ appear until some time after. So sorry I don’t know. I do get the impression that the HSE is not impressed with these regulations as they feel that current legislation already covers the issues and the really daft thing is that it will only apply to hospitals etc. In our place (mainly labs) we use sharps and the risks are very similar to the clinical environment but we are not covered by this directive. So we will have to muddle thorough relying on a mixture of risk assessment and common sense.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Have you read 2010/32/EU?
It mandates the use of safety engineered sharps, except where RA shows that they are not appropriate (and that RA should never be undertaken by someone from the safety office who has never taken blood or wielded a scalpel and has no knowledge of healthcare delivery!)
But 2010/32/EU requires so much more, including the provision of an effective sharps injury management plan that embraces immediate care of an injured person, referral to an infectious diseases specialist or equivalent, and follow-up that includes both clinical and psychological care. There is more.
Labs not included? Tosh, if its a healthcare lab since the directive and debate in the UK Parliament make it absolutely clear that it applies to all healthcare staff, through regrettably it makes no mention of others who make suffer injury, for example those in the police, prison and security sectors, waste handlers, research and related labs, and veterinary sector.
Also sitting on the grey borders are those subcontracted the NHS as cleaners and ancillary staff (who have been mentioned in Parliament as if a flag to the HSE to extract its corporate digit), and those in now privately owned laboratories replacing the traditional NHS lab.
With luck, those of use who have responded to the HSE consultation will see at least some of those comments in their guidance document, though DoH, the relevant professional bodies and healthcare regulators have each gone further faster, as have the nursing and ancillary staff unions. I expect from HSE a mishmash of misunderstanding that will require early and substantial revision, with eventual subversion by guidance from these more able sources.
Most NHS Trusts have got this in hand, at least in the main, and for once are ahead of the curve. Pressures from staff and lessons learned from the US, as well as pressure from the NHS Litigation Authority who will take responsibility for a flurry of claims from Trusts slow to implement, have ensured this. DoH is already leaning in those few Trusts that are slow to move
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Rank: Super forum user
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Thank You Ian
As I said we are not healthcare labs.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Ian
Who is Tosh?
There was a detective with this name in the former ITV police series "The Bill" but he didn't seem to have any connection with OS&H or healthcare!
:-)
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