Tag Archives: “nosocomial infection”

OSHA claims nosocomials to be “among the leading causes of death in the United States, accounting for an estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths in 2002.”  If accurate, hospital-acquired infections, these things you catch while you’re there for something else, kill more people in the U.S. every year than AIDS, drug overdoses, food-borne illness, murder, highway, rail and plane crashes, lightning, tornadoes, West Nile Virus and workplace fatalities COMBINED.

OSHA has publicly stated, “The healthcare sector as a whole experiences 1.3 times the injury and illness rate for private industry, with hospitals even higher, at 1.8, and nursing homes fully double.”  They describe healthcare as having “a weak culture of worker safety” related to a lack of data on the prevalence of infections among healthcare workers (HCWs) and “a lack of effort by healthcare employers” in tracking or documenting them.  OSHA thinks too many of an estimated 16.5 million HCWs are getting sick at work and that voluntary standards are not working, largely due to poor safety programs and lack of regulatory oversight.