{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Episode 399: National Hazardous Drug Exposure Registry","description":"\u201cThe United States does not have a national cancer registry. We have a bunch of state registries. Some of those registries do collaborate and share information, but the issue is the registries that do exist typically do not report cancer by occupation. So, we cannot get our arms around the potential work-relatedness of the health outcome given the current way the state registries collect information. What we\u2019re trying to set up, is a way to make what is currently an invisible risk, visible,\u201d ONS member Melissa McDiarmid, MD, MPH, DABT, professor of medicine and epidemiology and public health director of the division of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS\u00ae, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about the University of Maryland School of Medicine Hazardous Drug Safety Center Exposure Registry. Music Credit: \u201cFireflies and Stardust\u201d by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0  Earn 0.75 contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at courses.ons.org by January 23, 2027. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center\u2019s Commission on Accreditation. Learning outcome: Learners will report an increase in knowledge in the incidence of hazardous drug exposure and the tracking and reporting of healthcare worker exposures. Episode Notes  Complete this evaluation for free NCPD. University of Maryland School of Medicine Hazardous Drug Safety Center Exposure Registry information sheet ONS Podcast\u2122 episodes: Episode 330: Stay Up to Date on Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs Episode 308: Hazardous Drugs and Hazardous Waste: Personal, Patient, and Environmental Safety Episode 209: Updates in Chemo PPE and Safe Handling ONS Voice articles: Hazardous Drug Surface Contamination Prevails, Despite More Diligent PPE National Hazardous Drug Exposure Registry Safeguards Oncology Professionals NIOSH Releases Its 2024 List of Hazardous Drugs Safe Handling\u2014We\u2019ve Come a Long Way, Baby! Strategies to Promote Safe Medication Administration Practices Surfaces in Patient Bathrooms Often Contaminated With HDs, Despite Use of Plastic-Backed Pads ONS books: Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs (fourth edition) Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs Quick Guide\u2122 ONS course: Safe Handling Basics Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles: Hazardous Drug Exposure: Case Report Analysis From a Prospective, Multisite Study of Oncology Nurses\u2019 Exposure in Ambulatory Settings Personal Protective Equipment Use and Surface Contamination With Antineoplastic Drugs: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic Sequential Wipe Testing for Hazardous Drugs: A Quality Improvement Project The Use of Plastic-Backed Pads to Reduce Hazardous Drug Contamination Oncology Nursing Forum articles: Ensuring Healthcare Worker Safety When Handling Hazardous Drugs Factors Influencing Nurses\u2019 Use of Hazardous Drug Safe Handling Precautions Other ONS resources: ONS Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs Quick Guide Introduction to Safe Handling Huddle Card Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs Learning Library Hematology\/Oncology Pharmacy Association (HOPA) course: Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) List of Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings, 2024 To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities.  To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library. To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email pubONSVoice@ons.org. Highlights From This Episode \u201cWe thought that in order to answer some of the unclear questions about health risk, we would set up an exposure registry, in this case, for oncology personnel who handle the drugs. This would then create a cohort that we could ask questions to. For example, we could try to characterize whether there is a cancer excess in this group. Or characterize the reproductive abnormalities in excess that people are experiencing.\u201d TS 6:21 \u201cIt\u2019s sort of counterintuitive that the healthcare industry, whose mission itself is care of the sick, is a high-hazard industry. We typically think about the risk as being from infectious diseases, and certainly we\u2019ve all lived in our practice lifetime through some examples of that. Even before COVID-19, some of us were doing preparation for Ebola and that sort of thing. So, we\u2019re kind of used to that. But the hazards that you kind of grew up with, we\u2019ve routinized or normalized handling group one, human carcinogens, which a number of these drugs are\u2014it\u2019s just something we do every day. Well, it is, but we have to do it with respect and with care every day. And I think sometimes in that routineness of it, we have sort of lost sight of the vigilance that we need to maintain.\u201d TS 11:19 \u201cIt\u2019s very easy in the life cycle of a drug in an organization to do something that doesn\u2019t just impact you, but unknowingly, you\u2019ve contaminated a surface for somebody who comes behind you. Who maybe doesn\u2019t have plastic protective equipment on because something that got contaminated shouldn\u2019t have been contaminated in the first place. If we could all be thinking of it as more of a team sport, especially in terms of safe handling, that our disposition and drug handling affects not just us and our health, but those of our colleagues.\u201d TS 24:47 \u201cFor the job history pieces, we ask what year you started, what year you stopped, and we ask about estimations of handling. So we\u2019ll be able to come up with either a duration or some kind of metric for the intensity and duration of your handling history, which will then permit us to sort the population who completed the survey into sort of low, medium, high. And we\u2019ll see whether the health outcomes that are being reported are influenced by that drug handling history.\u201d TS 27:45 \u201cThe idea that we aren\u2019t exposed to the same therapeutic dose we give to our patients is absolutely true. However, the dosing schedule to them versus us is very different, and we are exposed frequently, if not daily, to very small concentrations. They don\u2019t reach a cytotoxic dose necessarily, but we do know from a lot of studies that either ourselves or our colleagues are taking up drug from contaminated work environments. And you\u2019ve probably seen there is an awful lot of intermediate evidence looking at genotoxic insult in pharmacists and nurses who handle the drugs. So clearly we\u2019re showing uptake and we're showing that there are biologically plausible, concerning measures that are taking place in us. So, I think that we need to come back and circle around the idea that we need to have deep respect for the toxicity of these agents.\u201d TS 35:03 ","author_name":"The ONS Podcast","author_url":"http:\/\/onsvoice.libsyn.com\/website","html":"