title: Factors Associated with Needlestick Injuries in Health Care Occupations: A Systematic Review.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Needlestick and sharps injuries (NSIs), are among the main job-related injuries that health care workers experience. In fact, contraction of hepatitis B or hepatitis C from work-related NSIs is one of the most common occupational hazards among health care workers.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to determine the factors associated with NSIs in health care occupation.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this study, a systematic and purposive review with emphasis on the research question was run to retrieve, evaluate and consolidate the required information. The following four key words were used to search for the relevant articles published from January 1998 to May 2015: NSI health care workers, risk factor and factors associated, in Science direct, EBSCO Host, PubMed, ProQuest, SID and Cochrane Library. Several steps of evaluation were taken to select and analyse the full texts of relevant articles. According to the inclusion criteria, we finally selected 11 articles from the 18642 retrieved articles.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The data of the analysed articles indicated that the highest incidence of NSIs was seen in nurses and that the associated factors were age, level of education, number of shifts per month and history of related training. The highest rate of NSIs was related to instrument preparation followed by injection and recapping of used needles. Findings show that health care workers suffer a high rate of needlestick injuries.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It was seen that device, location, or action cannot be separately considered as responsible for all types of the NSIs. Rather, each of them has a contribution to the NSIs. Nevertheless, factors with higher frequency should be given a higher priority.
authors.affiliation: PhD Nursing Student, Trauma Research Center and Faculty of Nursing, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran & Lecturer, Faculty of Nursing, Urmia University of Medical Sciences , Urmia, Iran .
authors.forename: Hossein
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Motaarefi
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor, Trauma Research Center and Faculty of Nursing, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences , Tehran, IR Iran .
authors.forename: Hosein
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mahmoudi
authors.affiliation: Professor, Department of Nursing, College of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University , Tehran, Iran .
authors.forename: Eesa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mohammadi
authors.affiliation: Assistant Professor, Department of Medical- surgical Nursing and Nursing and Midwifery Holistic Research Center, Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences , Shahrekord, IR Iran .
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hasanpour-Dehkordi
keywords: Blood and body fluids; Occupational health; Risk factors; Sharps injuries