New health and safety guidelines

Dawn Piper, senior sales manager at Initial Medical Services has found studies estimate that 56 per cent of dental clinical staff experience at least one needle-stick injury a year with the majority occurring after they have administered an injection on a patient. There are a number of existing and new laws which help to prevent this from happening and ensure any employer does their utmost to protect their staff, however something that has been missing so far has been an overarching framework to bring together all different health and safety requirements.

This is all about to change as of May 11, 2013 when the UK healthcare sector, including dentistry, needs to bring into force the necessary measures to comply with the new Health & Safety (Sharps Instruments in Healthcare) Regulations 2013, translated into national law from the European sharps injuries directive, European Council Directive 2010/32/EU, to overarch a number of existing health and safety laws and introduce further preventative requirements.