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Occupational Exposure to Blood or Body Fluids as a Result of Needlestick Injuries and Other Sharp Device Injuries Among Medical Residents in Japan

TO THE EDITOR—Medical residents are vulnerable to needlestick injuries and/or injuries from other sharp devices (hereafter referred to as needlestick and/or sharps injuries) because they lack experience and skill. In the United States, 71% of medical residents and medical students reported 1 or more needlestick and/or sharps injuries or other blood or body-fluid exposures every year. The incidence rate of needlestick and/or sharps injury describes the proportion of people who sustained such injuries during a specified period of time—for example, during the total time in which people in the population were at risk. Incidence rate is a precise estimate of the rate at which a particular event occurs. The incidence rate of needlestick and/ or sharps injury among medical residents has been determined in some countries"; however, there have been no reports on the incidence rate among medical residents in Japan. The aim of this study was to determine the monthly incidence rate of needlestick and/or sharps injury among medical residents at 14 training hospitals in Japan and to compare the incidence rate among first-year medical residents with that among second-year medical residents. A self-reporting questionnaire was mailed to 231 medical residents (127 first-year residents and 104 second-year residents) at 14 teaching hospitals throughout Japan. The questionnaire was anonymous to protect the privacy of the respondents, who were participating in a compulsory 2-year training program for various specialties, including internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, emergency medicine, obstetrics, and gynecology. The residency training program in which respondents were participating began in the hospitals in May. The survey was done at the end of August 2005; thus, it was assumed that the first-year residents had spent 4 months in the program and the second-year residents had spent 16 months in the program. The incidence rate of needlestick and/or sharps injury per person-month was calculated using the number of needlestick and/or sharps injuries experienced and the time that the respondents had spent in training. All statistical analysis was performed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 10.0 for Windows (SPSS). The Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine the difference in the incidence rate of needlestick and/or sharps injury between the first-year medical residents and the second-year medical residents. The Human Research Committee of Kitasato University, Japan, approved this study's recruitment procedures, procedures for obtaining consent, and field procedures before the survey was conducted. One hundred sixteen first-year medical residents and 76 second-year medical residents participated, of which 147 were men and 45 were women. The participation rate was 83.1%.