Nurses provide attentive patient care, quality clinical services, accurate documentation, and quick decision-making in fast-paced healthcare settings. As part of their daily responsibilities and to maintain patient and staff safety, they must ensure the safe and compliant disposal of sharps and pharmaceutical waste. When stress is high and multiple patients depend on nurses, hospitals should review and implement solutions that help make it easier and more efficient for nurses to do their jobs.
In 2022, Stericycle sponsored an independently administered nationwide blind survey of 125 randomly selected nurses in hospitals in the United States in order to dig deeper into the challenges nurses face and the role that medical waste management partners can play in mitigating those challenges.
Highlights from the white paper:
- Nurses dispose of sharps and pharmaceutical wastes regularly, but the process can be cumbersome
- Combining sharps and non-hazardous pharmaceutical waste disposal in one container can save time and minimize confusion
- Nurses’ time savings could transfer to patient care
- Nurses are open to process changes that lead to efficiencies
