Dr Joanna Ford and Pete Phillips have now had all three safer sharps evaluation papers published in the Nursing Standard:

• An evaluation of sharp safety hypodermic needle devices.·Ford and Phillips,·Nursing Standard 25 (35) 39-44,·2011.
• An evaluation of sharp safety blood evacuation devices.·Ford and Phillips,·Nursing Standard 25 (43) 41-47,·2011.
• An evaluation of sharp safety intravenous cannula devices. Ford and Phillips, Nursing Standard 26 (15-17):42-49, 2011.

The papers cover the user evaluations of a range of medical devices designed to prevent needle-stick injury by Welsh NHS staff.

Also of interest is the H&SL systematic review into the literature for sharps injury prevention devices (see An evaluation of the efficacy·of safer sharps devices. ·Systematic review.·Prepared by the Health and Safety Laboratory·for the Health and Safety Executive 2012.)

The new standard, BS EN 455-2:2009+A1:2011, has reduced the FAB (force at break requirement) for examination gloves from 9N to 6N, and for surgical gloves from 12N to 9N.  The National foreword also includes a statement from the UK committee, CH/205/3.

Further details on the change can be found here.

The paper investigates how variations in ambient temperature and humidity can affect the MVTR properties of a dressing, and derives and validates a method which can be used to predict the permeability of semi-permeable films under various combinations of temperature and humidity from a single set of test data.

See: The effect of temperature and humidity on the permeability of film dressings. S. Thomas, L. Barry, P. Fram, P.J. Phillips. Journal of Wound Care, Vol. 20, Iss. 10, 12 Oct 2011, pp 484 - 489.

See our neuraxial testing page for further information.

A paper on Latex gloves has just been published where SMTL are one of the co-authors.:

• Latex Medical Gloves: Time for a Reappraisal. Palosuo T, Antoniadou I, Gottrup F, Phillips P. Int Arch Allergy Immunol. 2011 Jun 29;156(3):234-246. (Full text PDF available)

The review was a collaborative effort between a number of European authors. The collaboration was aided by IMC Healthcare Communication, who were funded by Ansell Healthcare, Brussels.



The site acts as a repository of information on medical devices. The information may have been generated as:

• Work undertaken for Welsh NHS procurement processes in conjunction with Procurement Services (formally Welsh Health Supplies). This would typically include test reports of medical devices or our medical device datacards;
• Work undertaken for the Welsh NHS as part of SMTL's R&D remit. Examples of this would include work on single use screws and plates;
• Work undertaken on a commercial basis for medical device manufacturers and suppliers. This includes test reports for products tested at SMTL.

We are in  the process of loading information onto the site at the moment, but many older articles are already available.

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