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Properly choosing, assessing and finally using sharps container is one of the lost arts of Pompano Beach bio-medical waste management. Well, I would like to remedy that in this, hopefully useful and interesting article as this is something that is important for making sure that health care worker, your patients and the public are safe from all manner of blood-borne infections and diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV.
The first step, of course, should be educating your staff in the importance of using sharps waste containers. Remember, sharps waste should never be disposed with other types of waste. It goes with medical waste. However, unlike other solid wastes, such as body parts or disposable items like hospital gowns that have been contaminated with blood, sharps, like needles and such, should be placed in a sharps container and never directly inside a medical waste disposal bag. Which, by the way is red.
- You will need the following: a sharps container (of course), sharps bracket and a good screwdriver.
Okay, the first thing that you need to do is, obviously procure a sharps container. But wait, there are different colors of sharps containers! No, this isn’t without a reason. Yellow sharps containers are used for chemotherapy needles and red sharps containers are used in every other bio-medical waste management Pompano Beach situation. So the color of the sharps container is not personal preference, but actually an important decision.
The color, albeit an important decision is still secondary to the size and quality of the sharps container that you are buying. Depending on the amounts of sharps waste that you need disposed of on a regular basis, you may need a smaller or bigger container. Basically, you don’t want something that will always get overfilled with contaminated sharps waste at the end of each day, but also nothing that will sit half-empty for more than a week.
The sharps container can be bought from a local pharmacy, medical supply shop or even online. I wouldn’t recommend the third option as you never know what you’ll get and the quality is not guaranteed. Not to mention that you will likely have to sterilize the container thoroughly (don’t believe if the seller told you that he has done this as: A: he probably hasn’t and B: he did, but not properly). Personally, I prefer to buy my sharps waste container from a bio-medical waste management company in the area of Pompano Beach, Florida. They offer high quality sharps containers for which I know that they are leak-proof and sturdy enough to withstand piercing, bending and breaking. I’ve tried, their sharps containers are practically indestructible.
Tips and Warning on Sharps Waste Containers
Right, now let me give you some tips and a couple of caveats about sharps waste containers before you purchase one.
- Always make sure to check OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) for bio-medical waste management guidelines in your state. Some states have their own standards.
- Once you’ve filled the sharps container (but not overfilled), contact a Pompano Beach medical waste management company to pick it up and dispose of it. They’ll probably be using an incinerator for this.
