Sharps Injury Compensation Claims

Treat it as urgent. Encourage the wound to bleed gently, ideally under running water, and wash it with plenty of soap and running water. Do not scrub the wound, and do not suck it. Dry it and cover it with a waterproof dressing. Then seek medical advice straight away, through your occupational health service or your nearest emergency department, so that a risk assessment can be carried out and any treatment started without delay. Report the incident and complete an incident report form once you have been seen.

As soon as possible. Where the assessment indicates a risk of HIV transmission, post-exposure prophylaxis is most effective the sooner it begins, ideally within hours of the exposure, and it should not be started more than 72 hours afterwards. If some hours have already passed, that is a reason to seek help immediately rather than to assume it is too late. Treatment is usually taken for a month, and it can cause side effects, so your employer should provide appropriate support while you are on it.

The main concerns are hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV. The actual risk from any single injury depends on the source patient, the type of sharp, and the depth of the injury, and in most cases no infection occurs. Vaccination provides effective protection against hepatitis B, and where hepatitis C is transmitted it can now be treated with modern antiviral medicines that cure the great majority of infections. None of this removes the employer’s duty to prevent exposure in the first place, and it does not lessen the strain of waiting for results.

Possibly. Under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Biological Agents) Regulations 2013, a risk assessment should establish whether vaccination is required for a particular role, and this should happen before you start work. The Sharps Regulations give this a sharper focus in healthcare: where the risk assessment shows a risk of exposure to a biological agent for which an effective vaccine exists, the employer must offer that vaccine to you free of charge. National immunisation guidance recommends that healthcare workers with direct patient contact are immunised against hepatitis A and hepatitis B. Because some vaccinations protect for a limited period only, boosters may be needed. Offering vaccination does not, however, reduce an employer’s ongoing duty to maintain good infection control.

Yes. You do not have to contract a virus to have suffered a real injury. The months of testing, the restrictions placed on your personal life while results are awaited, and the fear of having contracted a serious illness can be genuinely damaging, and a recognised psychiatric injury arising from that ordeal can found a claim in the same way as a physical one. Appropriate counselling should be offered to you, and a failure to provide that support can itself form part of a claim.

In most cases, two years from the date of the injury, or from the date you became aware of a significant injury. Because a sharps injury usually happens on an identifiable date, the starting point is generally clearer than with injuries that develop gradually, though the position can be less straightforward where an infection or a psychological injury is diagnosed later. It is best to take advice early.

For two reasons. Clinically, it triggers the follow-up and treatment you are entitled to. Legally, it is often the clearest contemporaneous record of what happened, so describing accurately how the injury occurred, including staffing levels, equipment available, and any pressure you were under, is valuable. It also helps your employer identify where and how injuries are occurring so that they can be prevented in future.