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Both hospitals and laboratories must have a Pompano Beach bio-hazardous waste removal system or program that will help them safely and cost-effectively dispose of their contaminated medical waste. This will aid in lowering the chance of an infection spreading not just to other patients, but also to the area surrounding that medical care facility. One of the most important elements of medical waste management Pompano Beach that hospitals and other medical care facilities should pay attention to is the disposal of infected sharps. By placing them in the appropriate sharps containers or sharps boxes, these facilities will make sure that the possibility of a disease spreading as a result of someone getting stabbed or cut on an infected needle or scalpel is significantly reduced. But knowing that using sharps is necessary is something completely different to actually using sharps containers properly. Many health care facilities make tons of mistakes in their bio-hazardous waste removal when it comes to the disposal of sharps waste. Well, in this short, but, with hope helpful article, I will lay down the basic instructions on how to safely dispose of infected sharps, as I believe that this is a must-know for anyone dealing with medical waste management Okay, let’s get started, shall we?
- First of all, the best time to put sharps waste into the sharps containers is right after you use them. Don’t leave your used and now also contaminated needles around while you “go to the bathroom”. Put the sharps into the container first and then do whatever else you wanted to do.
The sharps container should be made of a material that is well-resistant to puncture, bending, breaking and fire and does not leak. They are usually orange/yellow or red, depending on whether they contain chemotherapy waste or not. Additionally, a sharps container, like all other containers used in bio-hazardous waste removal, should have a clear “biohazard” sign on the front.
- You should also put any other items related to infected sharps in the sharps container. This, for example, includes needle-free syringes, but not used surgical gloves or tubes. These go directly in the red biohazard bag.
- Make sure that you don’t overfill the sharps container and close it securely. Once you do this, place it in the storage area designated for medical waste, where it will wait for the bio-hazardous waste removal company workers to pick it up and take it to their facility to be destroyed. This will probably be done in an incinerator, though they may also use an autoclave machine to sterilize the waste.
Okay, so these are the basic instructions on how to safely dispose of infected needles and other sharps, but I also want to give you a few tips and warnings before I wrap this up. First things first, NEVER put contaminated sharps together with regular trash or even with the other bio-hazardous waste material in the red plastic bags. The needle can easily puncture the plastic bag and injure the worker responsible for medical waste management Pompano Beach.
