Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Aims: Occupational injuries, including needlestick (NS) and blood and body fluid (BF) exposures can have a deleterious impact on the physical and psychological health of the exposed and the latter can occur regardless of whether transmission occurs 1 . Similarly, the financial impact remains significant even in the absence of transmission, and provides further impetus to reduce the occurrence of occupational injuries. The reported risk of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) transmission after occupational injury from an infected patient is 0.4%-3% 2,3 . We aimed to identify commonly implicated factors associated with occupational injuries, the cumulative financial impact of injuries and the likelihood of transmission from HCV Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) positive sources. Methods: Data relating to NS and BF exposures occurring between 1995 and 2014 at a single tertiary center was prospectively collected by the local Staff Occupational Health Department and included factors surrounding occurrence, financial expenses and source viral hepatitis status. A subset of data for HCV PCR positive sources was also analyzed with respect to seroconversion rates. Results: 3494 exposures were recorded from January 1995 to May 2014, of which 2344 were NS, and 1150 BF exposures. The most frequent healthcare workers (HCWs) implicated were nursing staff (50%) and junior doctors (25%). Common geographical locations for exposure occurrence were hospital wards (31%), operating theatres (24%) and intensive care units (12%). The source patient was identifiable in over 90% of cases. Sharp items for injection (25%) or suturing (21%) were most commonly implicated in NS exposures with the hands (95.3%) being the most frequent body site exposed. Blood or blood products (61%), followed by saliva (13%) were the most likely BF exposures, with conjunctiva (64%) and intact skin (49%) the most commonly exposed body parts. The total cost of exposures was estimated at $800 484, which included laboratory and infection control personnel expenses. Of the 2704 sources for whom HCV status was known, 351 sources were HCV PCR positive. There was no documented HCV transmission in HCWs exposed to positive sources (155 NS and 196 BF), with serological follow up extending to a minimum of 6 months following exposure. Conclusion: Occupational exposures continue to pose a health and financial burden despite preventative measures. The absence of transmission from 351 HCV PCR positive sources is lower than expected from previously reported rates. Nonetheless, given such exposures are associated with a substantial financial burden and potential for psychological impact regardless of whether transmission occurs, ongoing measures are required to further minimize occupational exposures in HCWs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".